Lady of Avalon

  “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 h
e 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.

  The hill had become transparent as glass, and a light was shining through it that was not the sun. As she gazed, it intensified, rising until it blazed from the top of the Tor. Gradually the hill became opaque beneath it, and as the dawn sky grew brighter, the radiance atop the Tor modulated so that she could see, first a figure, and then that the figure was Taliesin’s. But he shone….

  Shouting, she began to run toward the Tor. There was no time for the stately spirals of the Processional Way. Viviane scrambled upward, clutching at the turf when her bare feet slipped on the dew-drenched grass. By the time she reached the top her breath came in tearing gasps. At the top she halted, clinging to one of the standing stones.

  The man she had seen stood in the center of the circle, arms lifted in salutation to the rising sun. She stared at his back, biting back her cry of greeting. This was not the man she had called “Father.” The clothes and the height were Taliesin’s, but his posture and, more subtle still, his aura were not the same. The glow in the eastern sky intensified, unfurling banners of rose and gold. Then she looked away, dazzled, as the newborn sun burned up over the edge of the world.

  When Viviane could focus again, the man had turned to face her. She blinked, seeing him first in silhouette, outlined in flame. Then her vision adjusted and she saw clearly for the first time what he had become.

  “Where is Taliesin?”

  “Here…” The voice was deeper too. “As he adjusts to my presence and I become accustomed to wearing flesh again, he will dominate more often. But in this hour of Omen it is I who must rule.”

  “And for what is this hour propitious?” she asked then.

  “For the consecration of a Lady of Avalon…”

  “No.” Viviane shook her head and let go of the stone. “I have already refused it.”

  “But I demand it in the name of the gods….”

  “If the gods are so powerful, why does my mother lie dead, and the man I loved, and my child?”

  “Dead?” He lifted one eyebrow. “They are no longer in the body, but you must know that you will see them again…as you have known them before. Do you not remember—Isarma?”

  A shudder shook her thin frame as she heard the name that Ana had called her when Igraine was born. Hearing, she glimpsed, brief and vivid as fragments of dream, all those lives in which they had been linked, in each one striving to carry the Light a little farther….

  “In this life, Taliesin has been a father to you, but it was not always so, Viviane. But that does not matter. It is not the union of the flesh but of the spirit that is of importance now. And so I ask you again—Daughter of Avalon, will you give meaning to all the suffering you have seen, and accept your destiny?”

  Viviane stared at him, thinking furiously. He was offering her a power beyond that of kings. Her mother had lived all her life safe on this isle, and never really used it. But Viviane had seen the enemy. In the world where Rome had ruled, Avalon could be no more than a legend, preserving the ancient wisdom, but reaching out only rarely to guide the affairs of men. Now all things were changing. The Legions were gone, and the Saxons had destroyed all the old certainties. From this chaos a new nation would emerge, and why should it not be guided by Avalon?

  “If I agree,” she said slowly, “then you must promise that together we shall prepare the way for the Defender—the Sacred King who shall place the Saxons under his heel and rule forever from Avalon!” It seemed to her that this had always been her role, with Vortimer, and before that, when she had been High Priestess of Avalon in other lives, and the spirit of the Defender had lived in other men. “To this purpose I pledge this life, and I swear that I shall do whatever is necessary to bring these things to pass.”

  The Merlin nodded, and in his eyes she saw an ageold sorrow and an ageless joy. “The King will come,” he echoed, “and he will rule forever in Avalon….”

  Viviane let out her breath in a long sigh, and came to him.

  For a moment he stood smiling down at her; then he knelt before her and she felt his lips brush each foot in turn.

  “Blessed be the feet that have brought you here—may you be rooted in this sacred soil!” He set his palms over her arches and pressed down firmly, and Viviane felt her soul reaching down through the soles of her feet, extending deep into the Tor. When she breathed in once more, its power came rushing back upward, and she swayed like a tree in the wind.

  “Blessed be your womb; the Holy Grail and the cauldron of life”—his voice shook—“from which we are reborn. May you bring forth blessings.” As he touched her belly, she felt his kiss burning through the cloth of her gown. She thought of the Grail, and saw it glowing crimson as the blood that had gushed from her mother’s womb, and then she was the Grail, and from her, life flowed ever outward in pain and ecstasy.

  She was still shaking when he kissed her breasts, hard and firm with milk for the child.

  “Blessed be your breasts, which shall nourish all your children….”

  As the power fountained upward, her breasts throbbed with sweet pain. They were full now for a child that was not her own, and she understood that, although in time to come she might bear others, she would always, in a sense, be feeding those who were her children not in the flesh but in the spirit.

  The Merlin took her hands, and pressed a kiss upon each palm.

  “Blessed be your hands, with which the Goddess shall work Her will….”

  Viviane thought of Vortimer’s grip slackening in hers as he died. She had been the Goddess for him then, but she wanted to give life, not death. She hungered to touch Igraine’s bright hair and Morgause’s silken skin. And yet, as she flexed her fingers and felt their strength, she knew that whichever they were called to deal—life or death—that they could do.

  “Blessed be your lips, that shall speak the Word of Avalon to the world….” Very gently, he kissed her. It was not the kiss of a lover, but it filled her with fire. She swayed, though she was too firmly rooted to fall.

  “My beloved, thus I make you High Priestess and Lady of Avalon, that your choice may confer sovereignty upon kings.” He took her head between his hands and kissed the crescent moon upon her brow.

  Light exploded within her skull, and Vision was opened; together they whirled through a thousand lives, a thousand worlds. She was Viviane,
and she was Ana. She was Caillean, calling the mists to hide Avalon; she was Dierna, burying Carausius on the sacred hill; she was every High Priestess who had ever stood upon this Tor. Their memories awakened within her, and she knew that from this time forward she would never be entirely alone.

  And then awareness settled back within the confines of her skull. Viviane was aware of her body, and found that she could move her feet once more. And yet she saw the man before her with doubled sight, the standing stones were glowing, and every blade of grass beyond them seemed edged with light. She knew then that she, as well as Taliesin, had been forever changed.

  By now the sun was well above the eastern hills. From here Viviane could look down upon the lake and all the sacred islands and see, nearer still, the people of Avalon, gazing upward with wonder in their eyes. Taliesin reached out and she gave him her hand.

  Then the Merlin of Britannia and the Lady of Avalon came down from the Tor to begin the new day.

  The Faerie Queen speaks:

  A woman-child with my face rules now in Avalon. A moment ago, it was her mother; a moment hence, perhaps the daughter of Igraine, who so resembles my daughter Sianna, will come. There have been many High Priestesses since the Lady Caillean passed and my daughter took up the ornaments of the Lady of Avalon. Some of them inherited by right of blood, and some because an ancient spirit had been reborn.

  Priestess or Queen, King or Mage, again and again the pattern alters and re-forms. They think it is the blood that matters, and dream of dynasties, but I watch the evolution of the spirit which transcends mortality. That is the difference—from life to life and age to age they grow and change, while I am forever the same.

  It fares likewise with the holy isle. As the priests of this new cult that denies all gods but one tighten their grip on Britannia, the Avalon of the priestesses moves even further from the knowledge of humankind. And yet they cannot ever be wholly divided, as we of Faerie have found. The spirit of the earth transcends all dimensions, and so does the Spirit that stands behind all their gods.