"Patricia Kennealy Morrison - The Hedge of Mist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kennealy Patricia)

Also by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison
THE BOOKS OF THE KELTIAD
The Silver Branch
The Copper Crown
The Throne of Scone
The HawkтАЩs 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 lifeтАФRudyard 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 starshipsтАФtheir passengers the Danaans, descendants ofтАФand heirs to the secrets
ofтАФAtlantis, 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 sunтАЩs agonies, now went back to those far stars,
and after two yearsтАЩ 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
BrendanтАЩs 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 starsтАФthe 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, тАШDeath-druidтАЩтАФand rightly so.
Edeyrn fastened round KeltiaтАЩs 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 DonтАФsuch of it as did survive the
Marbh-draoiтАЩs methodical slaughterтАФwas forced into hiding, while a great resistance movement, known
as the Counterinsurgency, was raised to fight against the TheocracyтАЩs 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 enoughтАФand so fatedтАж
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 HawkтАЩs Gray Feather and The Oak Above the Kings, Gweniver
Pendreic, Arthur Penarvon and Taliesin GlyndourтАФprincess, prince and bard to beтАФgrow up in the
Marbh-draoiтАЩs 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