Mordred, Bastard Son

by Douglas Clegg

  “I cannot say,” I spoke truthfully. “Will you wait here for me?”

  “For a thousand nights, I would wait,” he said. He watched me as I dressed swiftly, as if he wanted to memorize everything about me.

  I could not be sure if I would know the warmth of his bed, and the touch of his skin upon mine, ever again.

  4

  Morgause barely spoke a word to me, but I could feel her crackling anger in the air like heat lightning. She straddled her mare, her blue robes covering half the horse, looking like the great pagan queens of old, drawn upon the scrolls that the Druids kept. In her fury, she had achieved a nearly youthful beauty, and her skin seemed clear and smooth as if she had discarded that Morgause who had swallowed the life of servitude to King Lot and to her sons. She had become fiercely beautiful. “Be swift,” she said. “Your mother’s life hangs in the balance.”

  She offered her arm, and I leapt upon the saddle, just behind her. She drew the reins back like an expert horsewoman. I clung to my aunt as she whispered to the horse an enchantment that made it gallop as if half mad out along the banks of the stream, through the vale, into the forest along the ferny path. As we came upon a shimmering glade where the bright sun of morning bathed golden light upon a sparkling stream and tall grasses, the horse slowed, and Morgause said, almost as if she were cursing the spot, “This is where your lover brought Arthur to the Lake of Glass. This is where they slept and where Viviane herself came to help them, for they played at being in need of care. Here is where Lancelot told your father of that sacred place beneath the lake, where the sword Excalibur laid buried in rock with the bones of the kings of our tribe who had once held it in their hands.”

  I looked about at the spot, trying to imagine this. Then to the back of her hair, which had begun to shine in the light as if it were dyed a dark red. She turned to look at me. “Do you see what you’ve brought to us? Do you see how your life has come to this? You were cursed at birth, Mordred. Cursed by the crime your father pressed into your mother’s womb. And now you have sought out that man who should have been cut down at the altar of the Lady and his blood should have been spilt for his betrayal of her. All this. Your mother’s life itself. Her pain that she held during these years—and for what? To see her son in the arms of the man who engineered the stealing of our kingdoms from us?”

  I could say nothing to her, but felt that ice within me and the confusion of love and pain and the inability to understand what I would have to do to make this right.

  Again, she whispered words to her horse, and we were off, racing along a fen, and leaping over the weir just beyond the place where the meadows began that edged the upper doorway to the caverns. Once there, she dismounted, and drew me down as if I were a boy. She pressed me against the horse’s flanks, and drew that sword from the thin girdle at her waist. She pointed it to my throat. “She raveled her life into you, this much I know, so that you might see our homeland. And for this, Merlin taught you that Art that is not meant for others, and of which I know nothing, though I have much of the Art within me. You must ravel her, and unravel into yourself. Viviane has taken the poison from her blood and brought blood into Morgan’s body. But it is not enough. You brought us the broken Cauldron, and it cannot save her. They say that the raveling may kill, or it may bring back from the dead. Only this may save her, though it may send you into the Otherworld to do so.”

  I shivered as she said this, for I knew the ordeal that awaited me with the raveling—the pain and ache it would cause. And yet, for my mother’s life I would do anything. For the crime of having stolen the Cauldron of Rebirth, and betrayed the tribes and the Lady of the Lake who had always watched over me, I would do this.

  5

  Viviane sat at the edge of the rock-ledge shore of the lake, surrounded by other wise women and priestesses of the tribes. They had entered that trance of communion with the Lady of the Lake that she might intervene in my mother’s life, and heal the Cauldron of Rebirth that it might bring my mother back to life as it had brought others to life in the past.

  Morgause wasted no time going to them, but instead, drew me quickly to my mother’s bedchamber.

  Her bed was covered with ferns and wildflowers and dried mistletoe, cut from the oak in the Grove the previous winter and held as medicine by the Druids. Candles were lit about her bed, and a large tub full of water was there, as well, scented with sweet summer herbs and mint. I knew what this was—I had seen it before at the deathbeds of elders who had passed into the Otherworld. It was the ritual bath of the dying, for it is through the water of the Lake itself that the soul moves. Preparing the body with this water, cleansing the body, would help the pathway of the soul.

  My mother laid there, her body naked but for the gemstones that had been brought to draw the poisons from her. Her arms had been sliced so that the poisons could be bled from her, as well, and so that the healing blood of the priestesses might flow within her. She had been bathed, and had an oily sheen upon her skin. The Druids had painted upon her breasts and stomach, as well across one half of her face.

  Morgause clutched my shoulder and whispered against my ear. “She is half in the Annwn now. But you must ravel yourself into her and draw her back.”

  “It is her memory that is raveled,” I said without thinking. “Not her soul.”

  “The soul and the memory are bound together,” Morgause said. “Now, we must do this quickly, Mordred. No one must know. I will not lose her to the weak magick of these wise women. I have learned in my travels of the gods of the northern countries, and those who are forbidden even from Avalon.” She turned me about to face her, and drew her sleeves back, showing me her bare arms. They were torn at as if by wolves. “I brought myself last night to the brink of death that I might find her, but I was blind to anything but the soul’s journey.”

  I gasped and looked at her eyes. They seemed wild and afire, as if her mind no longer controlled her actions.

  “Will you do this?” she asked, though it was not a question.

  I glanced at my mother, who seemed to be sleeping peacefully. I would have thought her dead already but for the slight movement at her throat. She was more than half in the arms of death. I did not even believe she would live another hour.

  “If I do this, it may kill her,” I said.

  Morgause grinned. “If the poison that has torn her inside has not yet killed her, your Art will not. She is past pain. She is past sorrow. You must do this, Mordred. Merlin is not here. Few elders know this Art, and those that do will not use it to draw your mother’s soul back into its body.”

  My fear of Morgause grew as she spoke; my throat grew dry; I could not stop shivering though the chamber was warm. Part of me wondered how in all those years, my mother, having stolen this Art from Merlin, had not taught it to her sister, as she had shown it to me. And yet Morgause absolutely wanted me to ravel, and to try and stop my mother’s passing, or else to at least bring her memory into my own that she might live in a different sense.

  “Let us not waste time,” I said.

  I went over to my mother’s bed. I removed my clothing, for to ravel when clothed may interrupt the flow of memory.

  I lay down beside her, pressing my face near hers as she had once done years before when she'd raveled her past into my mind. My eyes near hers, I matched her slow nearly imperceptible breaths with my own. I began to feel myself go into that state of being that Merlin had taught me, letting my mind fly as if it were a raven, detaching my thoughts from my flesh, opening myself to the rhythm of my mother’s barely felt heartbeats, as if moving beneath water into her.

  As I went, I thought I heard Morgause speaking to me, whispering something that I could not quite understand. It was as if I heard her from some distant place. I was going deep into raveling with my mother, and it grew dark as I felt her death approach. I remembered Merlin warning me about the dying, how they tried to draw you in with them as they want, for the soul hated its lonely journey. Then, as if she were
upon a mountaintop somewhere in the darkness of my mind, I heard Morgause calling to me, “Forgive me, Mordred! Forgive me!” But I did not understand her, and soon her language seemed foreign to me and sounded like the cries of hawks along a cliff as they hunt. Instead, I began to feel the slowness of my breath, and feel the downward pull of my mother’s life as it ebbed. I was being drawn into a deep darkness, and felt as if I were floating in the Lake itself. I was inside her now, in her mind, her memories, but not memories of her past, but her current memories, perhaps mere moments after she experienced them. The thudding of her heartbeat was in the dark water all around me, and though I tried to swim for the surface, it was as if my feet were weighted with irons.

  Down I went into this dark watery place, and suddenly I moved more swiftly, something tugging me faster than I could resist, and I stepped through a waterfall.

  6

  I emerged upon a boat, which was nearly like the flatboats used upon the Lake, although these seemed to be of a simple build, with logs bound together by cross-tied ropes. A woman who looked so ancient that her face had begun splitting along its many wrinkles was at the helm, pressing it the boat forward by means of a long pole, thrust into the silt beneath the water’s surface, for it was not a deep lake. I glanced back at where I’d come from—this waterfall was like no other, for it seemed to flow upward from the lake upon which we navigated. I knew I must be in her dream—in my mother’s mind to such an extent that I had crossed from her memory into her vision.

  I saw other boats, some like the longboats that crossed the seas, others like this flatboat, made so crudely. As I looked at the woman who pushed her pole into the water, I began to see others standing upon the boat with us. They were insubstantial as marsh-light, with a green-yellow outline to their forms that seemed like fine mist. I realized then where I was, and where my mother’s vision took me.

  I was on the true Sea of Glass, of which our Lake was a pale reflection only. This Glass was of Annwn, the Otherworld, and I had crossed with my mother’s mind into the land of the dead.

  7

  Although hours seemed to pass on this journey, I knew from Merlin’s teaching that a year in the Otherworld might be a brief afternoon in our own; or it might be a century. Time twisted and turned in this place, for there was no setting sun or rising moon. It had that dark brilliance of the shadow of the moon as it crossed the sun. My boat seemed to be filled with warriors who had died in battle, for I caught glimpses of armor and swords, although these shone briefly and then became invisible to me. The old woman who guided the boat did not speak, although I heard the whispers of those around me. When I moved closer to the boat’s pilot, her eyes were white as Maponus, the guardian of the labyrinth.

  I could not see much ahead of us, for a thick fog had come in, low to the water. But finally, we came to the harbor of Annwn. I did not feel the fear I thought I would, and I suppose this might have been because I only traveled as a soul-rider, and not as one who would remain in Annwn. I glanced about at the black sand shore of the harbor, thinking I would catch a glimpse of my mother’s soul. I felt her near me, but did not find her among the mists that grew from the shades of the dead.

  The shores of Annwn were blackened, but soon enough the sand turned white as it approached a cliffside meadow above. A rock stair had been carved there, and I moved with the others up its steep ascent until I was at the top of the cliff. I felt the watery movements of others around me, moving forward, pressing at me. I saw faces of men and women and children, the hounds that had died with them also, and they came out of the mist and into a physical form, clothed as they had fallen in death.

  At a great distance, I saw that legendary citadel of Arawn’s kingdom—the black glass towers of Annwn. The sky filled with doves in flight; the air smelled of the fragrant lilies and the overpowering and heart-gladdening scent of the rare yellow lavender flower of which I’d known few in my life, for most had a purplish hue, brought by messengers from southern climes; and fruit trees blossomed and bore a heavy harvest along the road toward the great towers. Those Orphans of Death—children who had died before they had reached the age of eight—considered to be blessed keys of entry into this place, guided the heavily antlered stags upon which royalty rode toward the kingdom. I glanced about at the stags but did not see my mother.

  Then a great cloud seemed to move along the sky above us, and I was not alone in looking up at it. Down it came, like a gale wind upon the sea, and then seemed to me a plague of locusts moving as one along the water’s surface. As it came to the cliff, I heard the baying of hounds—this would be King Arawn, for his hounds announced his arrival in all places. As the locusts took form, I saw his great chariot, and a team of stallions drawing him onward. His white hounds, with their distinctive yellow ears, yapped and howled as they ran alongside the horses. Arawn wore the crown of dark stone, and from it, the two great ram’s horns curved over his scalp. His body was thickly muscled, and around his waist he wore a girdle of bones. And then, every bit of him, and of the chariot broke apart again, until it was like that dark cloud moving through those of us who stood along the roadside.

  In the thick of these locust-clouds, I saw those kings and princesses and warriors who had been slain or had died, but had deceived and lied and broken the taboos of the gods. They were wrapped from head to foot in thin thorny branches, and from the terror in their eyes I saw the fears of their lives revealed—and their great crimes against the gods themselves in the ways in which they were held captive.

  Still, I did not see my mother there, yet I felt her nearby. Finally, I saw her, up ahead, riding upon a thickset stag, drawn by a Death’s Orphan. I pushed my way through the other spirits that traveled slowly along the road. When I reached my mother, I called to her. As she turned to look upon me, I was horrified to see that she had been cut as if in two, from her head downward, and only one half of her existed in this realm.

  I felt as if I had made a mistake—I had gotten lost in my mother’s vision-journey into Annwn, but she had not yet died. She was only halfway there, and the raveling had taken me into that part of her memory, and not into the part that survived. My mother looked at me, as if she did not remember me.

  In the land of the dead, we do not know each other. The life in passing is like a dream, one dream among a thousand dreams.

  I had been misled, somehow. And yet, how could I have raveled with only half her spirit? How could she be there, and also in another place?

  In the raveling, it is so much like simply watching without attachment to what is seen, that my mind could not understand why I saw this, or why I did not find that part of her that had not begun the journey to death.

  But I took the stag’s lead from the Orphan, and began to move back through the throng of the dead, toward the steps down to the harbor at the Sea of Glass.

  As I did so, I felt another presence with me. Not my mother’s half-soul, and not those who had died who moved against me as I returned to the harbor.

  Someone else was there with me. Another watched me and seemed to breathe upon the back of my neck as I guided the stag to the stairs. Once there, I lifted my mother into my arms and began the descent down the steps toward the sands.

  8

  It was not until I had reached the flatboat, that I knew who had been with me while I searched for my mother among the dead.

  I saw her, there, on the black sands. She also turned to look upon me.

  Like my mother, she also had been cut down her center, only a half-soul.

  I felt my mind begin to spiral again, as if spinning as it fell down a deep, dark well.

  It was Morgause.

  She stood there, across the sands from my mother and I, and looked at us briefly.

  Then she continued walking toward the cliffs.

  Something had gone terrible wrong, for I could feel the dissonance of it, as if my mind grew queasy and full of a screeching pain.

  Morgause had tricked me. She had made me use the raveling fo
r something that was forbidden.

  I would not understand her full deception—and the horror it would bring—until I unraveled from my mother’s mind.

  9

  I awoke feeling as if I’d been stabbed in the gut, and I came up not from my mother’s bed, but from the tub of water that had been placed beside it. I gasped for air, and someone had already grabbed my forearm in her hand—it was Morgause.

  She lay naked against my mother’s body, and had held on to me, in that sacred water, so that I would not come up until she had finished with her ritual. I fought against her, for my own life, as she tried to press me back down beneath the water’s surface.

  To send me back into Annwn.

  Back to the land of the dead.

  It had all been an elaborate trick.

  All of it, to use my knowledge of a Sacred Art to bring my mother's half-soul back to her.

  Morgause had lied to me about not knowing raveling herself, but she had practiced a darker form of it.

  She had raveled into both my mother and I, knowing full well that my mother was dying and could not be revived.

  As my vision came into better focus, I saw that her eyes had changed. One had turned blood red from her exertion.

  The other was my mother’s beautiful dark-brown eye.

  As if Morgause’s body was now half my mother’s, as well.

  And half of her still remained in the Otherworld.

  “You were too late to save her,” Morgause whispered. “Too late, Mordred.”

  “What have you done?” I gasped, feeling horror in my body that had just begun the wracking fevers of one coming out of the raveling. I stared in terror at my mother’s lifeless body, and then at my aunt’s face, which was washed with blood as if she were some vampyric creature.