The Hedge of Mist Read online

  The Hedge of Mist

  A Book of the Keltiad

  Patricia Kennealy Morrison

  Also by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  THE BOOKS OF THE KELTIAD

  The Silver Branch

  The Copper Crown

  The Throne of Scone

  The Hawk’s Gray Feather

  The Oak Above the Kings

  Volume III of The Tales of Arthur

  The Hedge of Mist

  A Book of the Keltiad

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A Keltic Triad: The Three Great Influences on my writerly life—Rudyard Kipling, Lord Dunsany and E. R. Eddison. All praise, thanks and honor, pen-beirdd all.

  * * *

  KELTICHRONICON

  IN THE EARTH YEAR 453 by the Common Reckoning, a small fleet of ships left Ireland, carrying emigrants seeking a new home in a new land. But the ships were not the leather-hulled boats of later legend, and though the great exodus was indeed led by a man called Brendan, he was not the Christian navigator-monk who later chroniclers would claim had discovered a New World across the western ocean.

  These ships were starships—their passengers the Danaans, descendants of—and heirs to the secrets of—Atlantis, that they themselves called Atland. The new world they sought was a distant double-ringed planet, itself unknown and more than half a legend; and he who led them in that seeking would come to be known as Saint Brendan the Astrogator.

  Fleeing persecutions and a world that was no longer home to their ancient magics, the Danaans, who long ages since had come to Earth in flight from a dying sun’s agonies, now went back to those far stars, and after two years’ desperate wandering they found their promised haven. They named their new homeland Keltia, and Brendan, though he refused to call himself its king, ruled there long and well.

  In all the centuries that followed, Keltia grew and prospered. The kings and queens who were Brendan’s heirs, whatever else they did, kept unbroken his great command: that until the time was right, Keltia should not for peril of its very existence reveal itself to the Earth that its folk had fled; nor forget, for like peril, those other children of Atland who had followed them into the stars—the Telchines, close kin and mortal foes, who became the Coranians, as the Danaans had become the Kelts.

  Brendan had been twelve centuries in his grave when a time fell upon Keltia at which the Kelts still weep: a reign of blood and sorcerous terror, civil war and the assassin-murder of the reigning king and the toppling of the Throne of Scone itself, all at the hand of Edeyrn the Archdruid, known ever after as Marbh-draoi, ‘Death-druid’—and rightly so.

  Edeyrn fastened round Keltia’s throat the iron collar of the Druid Theocracy and Interregnum; and, with the help of traitor Druids, collaborating Kelts and the terrible enforcers called Ravens, kept it locked there for two hundred fearful years. The royal House of Don—such of it as did survive the Marbh-draoi’s methodical slaughter—was forced into hiding, while a great resistance movement, known as the Counterinsurgency, was raised to fight against the Theocracy’s forces.

  Yet even iron collars may be broken by a single sword-stroke, so that the sword be sharp enough, the blow well enough placed; and if the arm that wields the sword be strong enough—and so fated…

  In the year 1946 of the Common Reckoning were born in Keltia three children: a girl and two boys. As has been already told in The Hawk’s Gray Feather and The Oak Above the Kings, Gweniver Pendreic, Arthur Penarvon and Taliesin Glyndour—princess, prince and bard to be—grow up in the Marbh-draoi’s despite, to lead the Counterinsurgency and to rule Keltia in what are to be its most fated times.

  Arthur and Gweniver, royal cousins, are also co-heirs, equal lawful inheritors to the Throne of Scone. Though initially loath, they wed and rule Keltia together after the death of their uncle the High King Uthyr and their own overthrow of Edeyrn Marbh-draoi and all his forces; and eventually they even fall in love.

  Taliesin, Arthur’s foster-brother, reared with him by Ygrawn, Arthur’s lady mother, becomes the greatest bard of Keltia since the order’s founding, and himself weds Arthur’s half-sister Morgan, as mighty in sorcery as her mate in bardery or her brother in war.

  But Merlynn Llwyd, teacher to Arthur and Taliesin in their youth, and the great enemy of Edeyrn, has laid a doom on them all before his own mysterious magical vanishment; and when it is learned that Arthur’s other half-sister, Morgan’s twin Marguessan, has stolen away the great Cup that is known as the Graal and is one of the Four Hallows of Keltia, a quest is launched to bring it home again.

  And Arthur and Taliesin both alike must find themselves at the last upon very different quests of their own; while Morgan out of her might as sorceress raises for Keltia a protection for all time.

  * * *

  Twelve musics we learn in the Star of Bards, and these the twelve:

  Geantrai, the joy-song,

  whose color is gold and whose shout creation;

  whose number is one, and one is the number of birth.

  Grdightrai, the heart-lilt,

  whose color is green and whose descant rapture;

  whose number is two, and two is the number of love.

  Bethtrai, the fate-rann,

  whose color is white and whose charge endurance;

  whose number is three, and three is the number of life.

  Goltrai, the grief-keen,

  whose color is red and whose cadence sorrow;

  whose number is four, and four is the number of death.

  Galtrai, the sword-dance,

  whose color is black and whose blazon challenge;

  whose number is five, and five is the number of war.

  Suantrai, the sleep-strain,

  whose color is gray and whose murmur calmness;

  whose number is six, and six is the number of peace.

  Saiochtrai, the mage-word,

  whose color is blue and whose guerdon wisdom;

  whose number is seven, and seven is the number of lore.

  Creachtrai, the wound-weird,

  whose color is brown and whose burden anguish;

  whose number is eight, and eight is the number of pain.

  Fiortrai, the honor-hymn,

  whose color is purple and whose banner justice;

  whose number is nine, and nine is the number of truth.

  Neartrai, the triumph-march,

  whose color is crimson and whose anthem valor;

  whose number is ten, and ten is the number of strength.

  Dochtrai, the faith-chaunt,

  whose color is silver and whose crown transcendence;

  whose number is eleven, and eleven is the number of hope.

  Diachtrai, the soul-rune,

  sum of all before it, whose color is all colors and whose end perfection;

  whose number is twelve, and twelve is the number of God.

  —Taliesin ap Gwyddno

  * * *

  Clod ior, angor gwlad.

  (The fame of the ruler is the anchor of the land.)

  * * *

  Foretale

  Say of the lastlight: that fierce fiery beam, straight as a lance or a lasra, that shoots green and clear and cold out of the West where the sun has gone, one final glint like an arm upraised valediction and benediction both together.

  I have come now almost to the end of my telling, if not perhaps just yet to the end of my tale. All the others who began this running with me have finished before me, and I alone am here to speak the last truths of them and me. It did not turn out altogether as we had planned it, or had hoped it; but neither did it fall out for the most part as we had feared it, and for that we have ourselves to thank, as much as the gods who so willed it.


  We have a new High King these days, Arawn Ard-righ, son of my beloved friends; he has ruled for some years, and shows the best of both parents—and that is considerable. Far away on Aojun, his halfsister Donah reigns as queen over her own folk. I see my friend and brother in them both, my Artos, that grave and joyous soul; and their mothers also, those two great queens, so different and so very much alike. Arawn my nephew has himself wedded a strong and worthy consort—yet another Gwen to be queen over Kelts, this Gwenalarch, a daughter of the Clannrannoch—and they have given us a Tanista, Arianwen. As for Arthur’s other daughter, Arawn’s fullsister Arwenna, she too has wed, and will in time be the ancestress of royal dynasties yet to come; for did not Merlynn Llwyd tell us that the line of Arthur should never fail, not in Keltia nor among far stars?

  Merlynn himself never failed us, though he fell in strange fashion and many think before his dan demanded; but then, one who knows better than any other has told me a bit more of that seeming fall, and of what shall come of it long centuries hence. Said too that I myself would see it, I Taliesin, in a life of mine yet to be, and I find that thought both comforting and unsettling. My folk do not hold with the sad and terrible doctrine of one life and one only, and eternal punishment should we get it awry. Nay! She Who Made All has ordered things far better than that, with more mercy, more grace, more love for Her creation and Her creatures. She never wasted a grain of sand; how much less then would She be spendthrift of a soul…

  But for this life as now is, I am come at last to the lastwords, my life having been lived for words; those, and the songs I made to frame them. As I review what I have so far chronicled, I am for the most part pleased, with both the events and the chronicling thereof, though from time to time I stand gape-mouthed that things should have fallen out as they did—both words and deeds alike. Every Midsummer comes to my ears the ancient shout: "Is it peace?" And the joy of the answer as it rings back from every world of Keltia takes me out of myself: "Peace it is!"

  Too long was it until once again we could make that honest declaring, that proud and happy boast; and I am prouder still and happier that I myself had a hand in making it so, I and all the others. Well do we deserve the joy of it now… Still, even Edeyrn Marbh-draoi gave us peace—of a sort—in the two hundred years of his dominion; but it was a black and a bloody peace, not worth the having, nor the price it cost us all. We are graced that it and he are gone.

  I will go now too, I think, very soon; my beloved Morgan has set out before me, as I knew she would and prayed she might. At the least she was spared what I myself have known since she went—the loss and the silence, the tears and the dreams… I have left word in my will that I would be given the Fians’ ending, to be disatomed by the crystal scadarc upon the wicker bier, but, I tell you now, that is not how it shall be, though to oblige the poor teller of the tale you will keep it beneath the Horns. Of all those I leave behind, only my closest blood-kin—all I have left to me, my soul-kin are already moved on—shall know the truth of my real road. And Cathelin, my son’s daughter, she who was named for the Terran mother I never knew in this life—shall know more than that. For she is bard, my Cat-lass, my heir in art as well as in estate, and she will sing of it to such as are inclined to hear, and so will all of it be kept alive. What better end, or successor, could one ask?

  This tale I now complete is by volume far enough advanced as to make recapitulation perhaps a touch boresome, for teller and hearer alike. One cannot harp forever on the same string for those who through no fault of their own have come late to the story, but that is after all why ballads are constructed as they are and I pray earlier comers be patient with them and with me…

  If you have attended, then, to the previous of these chronicles, you will of your grace recall how it stands with us in tale-time: how Arthur the young came up from the Caer-in-Arvon to challenge Edeyrn the Marbh-draoi, and I came with him from the first; how he triumphed, and restored his uncle Uthyr Pendreic to the High Kingship so long usurped; how he wed his cousin the Princess Gweniver, to share with her the Ard-tiarnas of Keltia, she as Ard-rian, he as Ard-righ, and though they were wedded they were not truemates, not yet anyway; how we his Companions went with him on all his roads, following him into legend; how he loved Majanah, queen of the Yamazai, before he came to love his own wife, and had by her that Donah who now is Aojun’s queen (and some there were who even then believed that she was not his firstborn, but that he had gotten a son by his first wife, the loathly Gwenwynbar, who now is slain, and rightly too); how the sacred Cup of the Treasures, called by us the Graal, was stolen, or at the least was sore assaulted, by Arthur’s halfsister the Princess Marguessan, my own wife’s twin; and how the High Sidhe-folk did charge me with the carrying of these terrible tidings to Artos and to Gwen, so that quest might be made to restore the Cup…

  Ah, I make but a bad hand of it, now as then. If it is hard to be a legend, as Arthur himself learned to his sorrow and wrath and utter cost, harder still is it to correctly tell of one—in especial when that legend you would tell of is to you not just a legend but also a man you love above all other souls.

  My mother, who was as I have said of Earth, had a saying in her journals that I now know came from her homeworld, and it is this: that the pen can be mightier than the sword. And I have always wondered: Whose pen? Whose sword? Whose the hand on both or either?

  But you shall hear all now, of swords and pens alike full measure, to the end—or what shall pass for ending. And I pray you as all bards pray all hearers, disremember not of the telling, nor of the tale’s poor teller, nor of the great love and loss that live in tale and teller both.

  For remembering is all that we can hope for at the last.

  * * *

  BOOK ONE:

  Dochtrai

  * * *

  Chapter One

  Darkness a long time, or so at least it seemed. Then it seemed also, I awakened; or my body awakened, if not just yet my mind. I had no memory of how I had come to this place in which I found myself awake, or of my own past, or of this place’s name, my own name. Even so, I could not think of any state or place or space that seemed to me better, or even other. I was comfortable, very; I was alone, right enough, but nor could I recall the names or faces or voices of any whom I would have wished beside me in my isolate condition. I might have been a prisoner—I guessed I probably was—but I was not sure even of that.

  I was by no means ill-treated, nor even ill-kept. Food, good and hot and plentiful, if simple, arrived at amply satisfactory intervals left by an unseen hand while I slept (or, to be accurate, while I was unconscious); clear clean watersprings, cold and hot, bubbled out of two stone founts in one corner of the stone-walled chamber in which I was resident. I had an easeful, well-furnished sleeping couch; comfortable raiment laundered fresh in regular rotation, and thoughtfully supplemented by warmer or cooler garments when the season warranted; even my own harp, Frame of Harmony that had accompanied me through so much down the years. Yet for days, or maybe years, I could not recall even so much as this; could not call to mind, even, how to play my harp—far less how came I here in the first place. You will think it strange; and you are so right to think it.

  But, as I say, I was not unhappy; not even much distressed. It was as if I slept waking, undemanding, undemanded of, and was dreamless and thought-bereft withal. After a while, though, bit by bit through no action of mine, my state began to change, and I began to begin to remember…

  Nothing much at first: It started with the light. Perhaps it had been there all along, and only later did I come to notice it—a cool blue light even in daytime, or what I took for daytime, since I could see not sky nor sun nor star to mark the hours. There was a small high window through which the light seeped down to me; the window, though stoutly barred and grated, also sifted fresh air into my place of confining. There were many days led up to that moment, and many more before I became gradually ‘ware of faint sounds beyond my chamber’s ambit. Again, naught much, naught d
ramatic: just the natural small sounds of life and those living it, shouts of folk, tread or call of beasts, far tiny cries of birds. But even when at last it dawned on me that I might try to raise myself up to the window, and after another seeming eon I did in fact succeed in so doing, I still could see nothing. It was as if beyond the stone walls and iron grate—no door, you will note—that marked my world, only echoes existed.

  I cannot tell you how long it was, much less seemed—only later did I learn the true duration of my captivity; for such indeed it was, but as yet I did not know even that, though you would think that the bars and doorless cell would have given me the clue… Once I did remember, or was permitted to remember, how to harp, I consoled myself with that, playing unceasantly, until the harper’s calluses, all but worn away with disuse, returned to my finger-ends. But nothing new did I make of song; all music that came to me in that time came from a former time.

  You may well imagine how this interested me, how I speculated madly on even the smallest thing. Had I been a bard, then, before I came to be shut up here? I could not say. But it seemed at least possible: There had been the harp’s mere presence, for one thing. Most of our folk, however much we love music (and almost all of us do), would not possess such an instrument at all, let alone so fine a one, with its inlaid runes and gemstones adorning the soundbox. If bard, though, why could I not now create—unless of course that was the reason for my punishment?

  I was full ready to accept that; but still it seemed only part of it. I did not appear to have been a warrior; the scars of that trade were utterly absent, save for two or three small white relics, long since healed, marks that any user of a sword, however casual, might easily have come by. A Druid, then? When I got to this possible former profession I was suddenly seized by a kind of formless dread: a sense of something untapped, something tremendous and potentially liberating, shut away behind a barred door far more unassailable even than the walls of my physical chamber. But if it were indeed magical skill that had been set off so, it had been sealed off by a far greater talent than I, and I could find no way to come at it. If I were Druid, belike I was not a very gifted one… Perhaps I deserved to be here.