Lady of Avalon (51 page)

Why should this child live when her own had died? Her hands tightened involuntarily, and the baby whimpered, but did not let go. And that, she supposed, was the answer. Viviane forced her fingers to loosen. This one was greedy for life and always would be.

Other people came in. Without real awareness she answered questions and gave commands. Presently they wrapped Ana’s body and carried it away. But still Viviane sat, holding the now sleeping baby in her arms. She did not stir until Taliesin came in. He had aged since that morning, she thought dimly. He looked like an old man. But she let him lead her from the shadows of the chamber into the brightness of the day.

“But Viviane
must
agree,” said Claudia. “We might have chosen Julia as High Priestess, but she is dead too. Really, we’ve never discussed the succession. Ana was not even fifty years old!”

“Can we trust Viviane? She ran away…” said one of the younger Druids.

“She came back,” answered Taliesin heavily. He wondered why he was arguing, why he should try to force his daughter, if she was his child, into the role that had killed her mother. His ears still rang with that last, dreadful cry.

“Viviane is of the royal line of Avalon and a trained priestess,” said Talenos. “Of course we will choose her. She is very like Ana, and she is already twenty-six years old. She will serve Avalon well.”

Dear Goddess, it is true,
thought Taliesin, remembering how beautiful Ana had been when she bore Igraine, and how much Viviane had looked like her with the little one, whom he had named Morgause, in her arms. At least she had been able to fight for her mother’s life, while he could only sit and wait. And Viviane was allowed to show her grief. He could claim the dead woman as neither beloved or lover, but only as his High Priestess.
Ana,
his heart cried,
why did you leave me so soon?

“Taliesin,” said Rowan, and he looked up and tried to smile. Shock and grief had marked all their faces; Ana’s daughters were not the only ones who wept because their mother was gone. “You must tell Viviane how much we need her. She will surely listen to you.”

Why?
he wondered.
So that the burden can kill her too?

He found Viviane in the orchard, nursing the baby. He supposed it did not take the Sight for her to guess what he had come to say.

“I will care for this little one,” she said tiredly, “but you must choose another High Priestess for Avalon.”

“Do you think yourself unworthy? That argument got me nowhere when the choice of the Druids fell on me…”

She looked at him and almost laughed. “Taliesin, you are the noblest man I know, and I am a green girl. I am not ready for such responsibility; I am not fit for it; I do not want it. Is that reason enough for you?” The baby, falling back into the swift sleep of infancy, let go the breast, and Viviane covered herself with her veil.

“No…and you know it. Your mother was training you for this, though she never expected to pass on the power so soon. You are very like your mother, Viviane…”

“But I am
not
Ana-
Father.
Think!” she added suddenly. “Even if there were no other reason, the rite by which the Arch-Druid consecrates the High Priestess is one we cannot do…”

Taliesin stared at her, for, indeed, he had forgotten. Ana had never told him if he had begotten Viviane, but in every way that counted, he had been her father since she was fourteen years old. At this moment, however, he did not feel that way. She was so much like her mother-why could she not
be
her mother, now, when he needed her so?

A groan he had not expected escaped his lips and he stood up, trembling. Abruptly he understood why Viviane had fled before.

“Father-what is it?”

He thrust out his hand as if to ward off a blow, and his fingers brushed across her soft hair. Then he was in motion, his long stride carrying him swiftly through the trees.

“Father, must I lose you too?” Her cry followed him, and the baby, waking, began to wail.

Yes,
he thought wildly,
and I must lose myself, before I shame us all. Ana would not allow me to give up my body to the Merlin, but I must call on him now. There is no other way…

Taliesin was never to regain much memory of the hours between that moment and nightfall. At some point he must have slipped into his chamber and retrieved his harp, for, when the long dusk of midsummer gave way to darkness, he found himself with the sealskin case in his arms, standing at the foot of the Tor.

He stared up at that sharp, stone-toothed summit, black against the glow of the rising moon, and committed his spirit to the care of the gods. He had climbed it so many times, his feet knew the way. By the time he reached the top, if he reached it, the moon would be in the sky. And when he came down again, if he returned, he would not be the same. At his initiation, the path had seemed to lead not up the hill but through it, to that place beyond human comprehension that lay at the heart of all realities. Then the smoke of sacred herbs had aided him. But since that time he had given his soul to music. If the power of his harp would not help him to the place he sought, he would not get there at all.

Taliesin adjusted the straps that held the harp against his body, reached out with his right hand, and drew the first sweet music from the lower strings, choosing the mode which was used for the most ancient magics, the harmonies whose use, prolonged, had the power to open a way between the worlds. With his left he stroked upward, releasing the notes in a shimmer of sweet sound. Again and again he drew forth the music, moving slowly forward, until suddenly he glimpsed an answering shimmer in the grass.

He felt the path solid beneath his feet, but when he looked down, the ghosts of grasses waved around his calves, and then his knees. The harp sang forth his delight in a series of triumphant chords as Taliesin walked into the Tor.

The holy isle existed in a reality that was perhaps one level removed from that of the world of humankind. One forgot, living here, that beyond Avalon there were other levels, stranger spheres. Around the hill Taliesin trod the sacred way, and inward and around again. That first time he followed this way, it had brought him to the crystal cave hidden in its heart, but now he could sense that the path was rising. Hope lifted his heart, and his fingers flew faster as he strode on.

He was all the more surprised to come to a barrier. His music faltered as the light around him grew. The barrier shimmered; a figure was standing there. Taliesin took a step backward and so did the Guardian; he moved forward and the Other came to meet him; he looked into its eyes and saw that it both
was
and
was not
himself.

Taliesin had done this before, at his first initiation, with the symbols of mirror and candle flame. This was the Reality. He stood still, reaching for calm.

“Why have you come here?”

“I seek to know in order that I may serve…”

“Why? It will make you no better than other men. As life follows life, every man and every woman shall come at last to perfection. Do not delude yourself that going forward will free you from your problems. If you take up the burden of knowledge, your road will be harder. Would you not rather wait for enlightenment in the course of time, like other men?”

Was the Voice his own? Surely these were things he knew. But he saw now that he had never understood them before.

“It is the Law that if one truly seeks he cannot be refused entrance to the Mysteries… I offer myself to the Merlin of Britannia, that through me He may save this land.”

“Know that you alone can open the gateway between what is without and what is within. But before you can attain to Him, you must face Me…”

Taliesin blinked as pale flame flickered into being above his head. In the mirror the light burned as well. He gazed, appalled at what he saw within, for the face before him shone with a terrible beauty, and he knew now what he would be losing if he persevered in the purpose that had brought him here.

“Let me pass…”

“Three times you have asked, and I may not refuse you… Are you prepared to suffer for the privilege of bringing enlightenment to the world?”

“I am…”

“Then may the light of the Spirit show you the way…”

Taliesin stepped forward. Radiance sparked and shimmered around him as he became one with the figure in the mirror, and then the barrier was gone.

But he was not surprised, as he completed the next turn in the path, to find his way blocked once more. This time it was a pile of rock and earth that quivered as if at any moment it would come crashing down.

“Halt-”
At the hissed command, a little loose soil came sliding down.
“You cannot pass. My earth will cover your fire.”

“Fire burns at earth’s heart; it will not extinguish my light.”

“Pass, then, with your fire undiminished.”
What had been solid turned to shadow and misted away. Taliesin took a deep breath and went forward.

Around the hill he passed, and around again. The chill breeze that moved always through these passageways intensified until it was a gale against which he could hardly stand.

“Halt! Wind blows out your fire!”

“Without it no flame can live; your wind but nourishes my flame!” Indeed, as he spoke, a great light blazed up above him; then it subsided again as the wind faded away.

He went forward, shivering as the air became damp and cold. Now he could hear water dripping with that same relentless power that had half drowned the world. In the winter just past, he had learned to fear the rain. The moisture in the air increased, and his flame began to gutter.

“Halt…”
The Voice was liquid and low.
“Water will quench your fire, as the Great Sea of Death will swallow up the life you have known.”

Taliesin struggled to breathe as the air turned to mist around him. In the next moment, his light was gone.

“Be it so,” he croaked, coughing. “Water puts out fire, and death will reduce this body to its elements. But hidden in the water is air, and these elements may recombine to nourish a new flame…” He knew that, but it was hard to believe it. He fought to breathe in the darkness, and the water filled him, and he sank into a dark and dreamless sea.

This was not how he had expected it to be.

The spark of consciousness that had been Taliesin wondered what had become of his harp. He could not even feel his body anymore. He had failed. In the morning, perhaps, they would find his abandoned body on the Tor and wonder how a man could drown on dry land. Well, let them wonder. He contemplated the thought without emotion. He floated, and gradually, in that place which is beyond all manifestation, he let volition, and memory, and identity itself dissolve, and found peace.

He could have stayed there until eternity came to an end, except for the voices.

“Child of earth and starry heaven, arise-”

“Why would you disturb one who has finished with the world and its torments? Let him rest, safe in My cauldron. He belongs to Me…”

It seemed to him he had heard this conversation before, but then it was the male voice that had brought the darkness.

“He has vowed himself to the cause of Life; he is pledged to carry the sacred fire into the world…”

This too he had heard before. But whom were they discussing?

“Taliesin, the Merlin of Britannia summons you…”
The voice rang like a gong.

“Taliesin is dead,”
the female voice responded.
“I have swallowed him.”

“His body lives, and he is needed in the world.”

He listened with more interest, for it came to him now that he had been called Taliesin once, long ago.

“He is gone,” the male voice said. “They needed more than he could give. Take the body he left behind and use it as you will.” There was a long silence, then, surprisingly, a man’s deep laughter.

“You must return as well, for I will need your memories. Let Me in, my son, and do not be afraid…”

The emptiness around him began to fill with a Presence, huge and golden. Taliesin had drowned in the Darkness; now he burned in the Light. The Darkness had enfolded him, but this radiance was penetrating slowly but surely to his center. Though he was afraid, he recognized that acceptance of this possession was what he had been offering, and in a final act of self-sacrifice he opened the door to let the Other in.

For a moment he saw the face of the Merlin, and then the two became One.

The passageway around him glowed with light. The Merlin gazed upward, and saw, blurred and shimmering as if he looked through water, the first radiance of the dawn.

Since sunset, when Taliesin had not come in for the evening meal, they had been searching. None of the boats were missing, so he must still be on the island, unless of course he were floating in the lake somewhere. Viviane, alternately weeping and cursing, understood now how he must have worried when she ran away. If her skill on the harp had been more than rudimentary, she would have tried to sing him home. But Taliesin’s harp was gone as well. It was that which gave her hope, for, even if he sought death for himself, he would not have allowed the instrument to be destroyed.

When Viviane came back out of the house after giving Morgause her predawn feeding, the torches of the searchers were still moving through the orchard, their flames flickering pale in the lightening air. Soon, she thought, the sun would be rising. She turned toward the Tor to check the eastern sky and stopped short, staring.