"Morrison, Patricia Kennealy - King Arthur 03 - Hedge Of Mist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison Patricia Kennealy)

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 lifeЧRudyard 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 starshipsЧtheir passengers the Danaans, descendants ofЧand heirs to the secrets ofЧAtlantis, 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 starsЧthe 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?Чand 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 DonЧsuch of it as did survive the Marbh-draoi?s methodical slaughterЧwas 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 enoughЧand 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 GlyndourЧprincess, prince and bard to beЧgrow 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.