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

Saiochtrai, the mage-word,
whose color is blue and whose guerdon wisdom;
whose number is seven, and seven is the number of lore.
Creachtrai, the wound-weird,
whose color is brown and whose burden anguish;
whose number is eight, and eight is the number of pain.
Fiortrai, the honor-hymn,
whose color is purple and whose banner justice;
whose number is nine, and nine is the number of truth.
Neartrai, the triumph-march,
whose color is crimson and whose anthem valor;
whose number is ten, and ten is the number of strength.
Dochtrai, the faith-chaunt,
whose color is silver and whose crown transcendence;
whose number is eleven, and eleven is the number of hope.
Diachtrai, the soul-rune,
sum of all before it, whose color is all colors and whose end perfection;
whose number is twelve, and twelve is the number of God.
ЧTaliesin ap Gwyddno

Clod ior, angor gwlad.
(The fame of the ruler is the anchor of the land.)

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 parentsЧand 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 consortЧyet another Gwen to be queen over Kelts, this Gwenalarch, a daughter of the ClannrannochЧand they have given us a Tanista, Arianwen. As for Arthur?s other daughter, Arawn?s 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 soul?
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 didЧboth 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 now? Still, even Edeyrn Marbh-draoi gave us peaceЧof a sortЧin 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 wentЧthe loss and the silence, the tears and the dreams? I have left word in my will that I would be given the Fians? 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-kinЧall I have left to me, my soul-kin are already moved onЧshall know the truth of my real road. And Cathelin, my son?s daughter, she who was named for the Terran mother I never knew in this lifeЧshall 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 boresome, for teller and hearer alike. One cannot harp forever on the same string for those who through no fault of their own have come late to the story, but that is after all why ballads are constructed as they are and I pray earlier comers be patient with them and with meЕ
If you have attended, then, to the previous of these chronicles, you will of your grace recall how it stands with us in tale-time: how Arthur the young came up from the Caer-in-Arvon to challenge Edeyrn the Marbh-draoi, and I came with him from the first; how he triumphed, and restored his uncle Uthyr Pendreic to the High Kingship so long usurped; how he wed his cousin the Princess Gweniver, to share with her the Ard-tiarnas of Keltia, she as Ard-rian, he as Ard-righ, and though they were wedded they were not truemates, not yet anyway; how we his Companions went with him on all his roads, following him into legend; how he loved Majanah, queen of the Yamazai, before he came to love his own wife, and had by her that Donah who now is Aojun?s queen (and some there were who even then believed that she was not his firstborn, but that he had gotten a son by his first wife, the loathly Gwenwynbar, who now is slain, and rightly too); how the sacred Cup of the Treasures, called by us the Graal, was stolen, or at the least was sore assaulted, by Arthur?s halfsister the Princess Marguessan, my own wife?s twin; and how the High Sidhe-folk did charge me with the carrying of these terrible tidings to Artos and to Gwen, so that quest might be made to restore the CupЕ
Ah, I make but a bad hand of it, now as then. If it is hard to be a legend, as Arthur himself learned to his sorrow and wrath and utter cost, harder still is it to correctly tell of oneЧin especial when that legend you would tell of is to you not just a legend but also a man you love above all other souls.
My mother, who was as I have said of Earth, had a saying in her journals that I now know came from her homeworld, and it is this: that the pen can be mightier than the sword. And I have always wondered: Whose pen? Whose sword? Whose the hand on both or either?
But you shall hear all now, of swords and pens alike full measure, to the endЧor what shall pass for ending. And I pray you as all bards pray all hearers, disremember not of the telling, nor of the tale?s poor teller, nor of the great love and loss that live in tale and teller both.
For remembering is all that we can hope for at the last.

BOOK ONE:
Dochtrai

Chapter One
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Darkness a long time, or so at least it seemed. Then it seemed also, I awakened; or my body awakened, if not just yet my mind. I had no memory of how I had come to this place in which I found myself awake, or of my own past, or of this place?s name, my own name. Even so, I could not think of any state or place or space that seemed to me better, or even other. I was comfortable, very; I was alone, right enough, but nor could I recall the names or faces or voices of any whom I would have wished beside me in my isolate condition. I might have been a prisonerЧI guessed I probably wasЧbut I was not sure even of that.
I was by no means ill-treated, nor even ill-kept. Food, good and hot and plentiful, if simple, arrived at amply satisfactory intervals left by an unseen hand while I slept (or, to be accurate, while I was unconscious); clear clean watersprings, cold and hot, bubbled out of two stone founts in one corner of the stone-walled chamber in which I was resident. I had an easeful, well-furnished sleeping couch; comfortable raiment laundered fresh in regular rotation, and thoughtfully supplemented by warmer or cooler garments when the season warranted; even my own harp, Frame of Harmony that had accompanied me through so much down the years. Yet for days, or maybe years, I could not recall even so much as this; could not call to mind, even, how to play my harpЧfar less how came I here in the first place. You will think it strange; and you are so right to think it.
But, as I say, I was not unhappy; not even much distressed. It was as if I slept waking, undemanding, undemanded of, and was dreamless and thought-bereft withal. After a while, though, bit by bit through no action of mine, my state began to change, and I began to begin to remember?
Nothing much at first: It started with the light. Perhaps it had been there all along, and only later did I come to notice itЧa cool blue light even in daytime, or what I took for daytime, since I could see not sky nor sun nor star to mark the hours. There was a small high window through which the light seeped down to me; the window, though stoutly barred and grated, also sifted fresh air into my place of confining. There were many days led up to that moment, and many more before I became gradually ?ware of faint sounds beyond my chamber?s ambit. Again, naught much, naught dramatic: just the natural small sounds of life and those living it, shouts of folk, tread or call of beasts, far tiny cries of birds. But even when at last it dawned on me that I might try to raise myself up to the window, and after another seeming eon I did in fact succeed in so doing, I still could see nothing. It was as if beyond the stone walls and iron grateЧno door, you will noteЧthat marked my world, only echoes existed.
I cannot tell you how long it was, much less seemedЧonly later did I learn the true duration of my captivity; for such indeed it was, but as yet I did not know even that, though you would think that the bars and doorless cell would have given me the clue? Once I did remember, or was permitted to remember, how to harp, I consoled myself with that, playing unceasantly, until the harper?s calluses, all but worn away with disuse, returned to my finger-ends. But nothing new did I make of song; all music that came to me in that time came from a former time.
You may well imagine how this interested me, how I speculated madly on even the smallest thing. Had I been a bard, then, before I came to be shut up here? I could not say. But it seemed at least possible: There had been the harp?s mere presence, for one thing. Most of our folk, however much we love music (and almost all of us do), would not possess such an instrument at all, let alone so fine a one, with its inlaid runes and gemstones adorning the soundbox. If bard, though, why could I not now createЧunless of course that was the reason for my punishment?