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

Foretale
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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 parentsтАФand 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 consortтАФyet another Gwen to be
queen over Kelts, this Gwenalarch, a daughter of the ClannrannochтАФand they have given us a Tanista,
Arianwen. As for ArthurтАЩs other daughter, ArawnтАЩs 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 soulтАж
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 didтАФboth 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 nowтАж Still, even Edeyrn Marbh-draoi gave us peaceтАФof a sortтАФin 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 wentтАФthe loss
and the silence, the tears and the dreamsтАж I have left word in my will that I would be given the FiansтАЩ
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-kinтАФall I have left to me, my soul-kin are already moved onтАФshall know
the truth of my real road. And Cathelin, my sonтАЩs daughter, she who was named for the Terran mother I
never knew in this lifeтАФshall 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