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

I huddled there motionless a while, too hurt and sad to move; then suddenly yawned hugely. Whether it was the spell renewed upon me or the work of the song upon my soul or maybe even the locket ensuring my safety, I was all at once tired beyond words, wearied as if I had been battling all day in fior-comlainn. Perhaps I had; but I drank off thirstily all the slightly musty water in the quaich beside the bed, then went over to the fount to plenish the cup again with fresh.
Sipping small of the stingingly cold water, I lay down again, pondering the brief encounter with my captor, wondering at the song that had come to lift my heart, fingering the reassuring outline of the locket through my shirt and tunic. Perhaps it was an omen of better dan to come, that I should have recalled this particular song, should have become ?ware of the locket when I did. Perhaps the dream-faces tonight would have answers for me; perhaps, at the very least, there should be a respite from questions and from fears.
I rolled myself up in the pieced sheepskins that served me as coverlet, feeling the small but definite weight of the gold feather against my chest, and gave myself over to sleep, the music still sounding somewhere far within, like the rush of a stream heard from a distance on a quiet night of fog and mist. How wrong, and how right, I was, would soon be proved; and in no uncertain manner.

Chapter Two
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I was lying upon my couch, trying to recall a particularly tricky bit of fingering for an alternative chord, when suddenly there came a blur and vibration in the very air, and a haze began to form in one corner of my cell.
I was on my feet in an instant, my fingers moving as if of their own will in a pattern my conscious mind could not frame, a warding-spell of some sort. I was almost as astonished at this hitherto unremembered evidence of Druid training as I was at what occasioned it:Someone else was joining me in captivity.
Whoever it was, he or she was not arriving in the same easy manner in which my previous visitor had contrived to join me. This new arrival was probably but another poor bodach doomed to the same forgetful, and forgotten, existence as I myself had been seemingly sentenced to. StillЧI brightened a little even in the face of the unknown cellmate?s misfortuneЧit would be someone at least to talk to, maybe even someone who had known me of old and could at last give me that little trifling detail of my own identity.
I had not long to wait: Almost as quickly as it takes to tell of it, the thing was done, and I was no longer alone. And I stared as if my eyes were on sticks, for the man now cutting a very sharp glance round the chamber was the man I had so often seen in dreams, the tall bearded lord with the air of a king.
He saw me at once, and stopped where he stood. Then a look of the most unutterable joy and sorrow together came over his handsome countenance, and he reached out a tentative hand to me where I lurked over against the far wall. He made as if to speak, but instead an extraordinary smile grazed the edge of his beard, and he seemed to settle back within himself.
His first words were an uncanny echo of those my last surprise visitor had spoken.
"Do you know me?"
I drew a deep shivering breath, and let it out again before I felt able to answer him.
"I think I must? I have seen you, often, in dreams; I feel, I know, that we have metЧbut nay, I cannot put name to you. Nor yet to myself, if you must know; so if you are looking to me to tell me who you are, you must look again, and we both be nameless together."
He smiled again, but now there were tears in his eyes, which astonished me even more. "Nay, that knowledge is nothing I need ask of you. But, truly, do you not know meЧTaliesin?"
I wish I could say that at his pronouncing of what I knew at once to be my own name I remembered everything; but that would be a lie. Still, I was immediately certain of the truths in his words: I was Taliesin, and he and I knew each other well.
He was a little hurt, I could see, that I did not remember him; but he put it by at once, and turned with a devastatingly refreshing air of practicality to the greater matters at hand.
"Well, I know you, braud"Чand the endearment somehow gave me a deeper pang than it seemed to warrantЧ"and I will prove it withal?" He was running that all-seeing glance of his into every corner of the stone chamber, searching for I knew not what.
"You will find no way out, I fear, save the one you came in by," I said presently, but I was by now shaking a little. "Will you not tell me who you are, and what I might be, before we are many minutes older?"
He laughed then, in real amusement, but did not for an instant cease his searching. "All in good time, my Talynno? I know you have been here long and long in forgetfulness, but it is not yet safe for us to speak."
Oh, was it not? When, then? But I asked no question more, and withdrew to my couch to watch him complete his inspection of the chamber. He quartered every inch like a hunting-dog, peering into every corner, running his hands over the cold stone walls, even dipping cupped fingers into the waterfounts. At last it seemed that his curiosity was satisfied, for he sat down opposite me, on the pile of furs and bedding that had appeared at the same time as he himself, and which was apparently intended to serve as his place of repose, and looking straight at me he smiled.
"Not so ill as I had feared, though less good than I had hoped," he said, half to himself. "Any road, we are here, and we are together, and that alone is more than I had prayed so long should be?"
"How long?" I asked. "Have I been here such a span?"
Now he was no longer smiling. "Aye, braud, my sorrow for it? You have been two years in this place, and only a fortnight since did we learn that you were here at all."
When I made no immediate response to this rather staggering bit of information, he leaned forward, as if he were trying to reach me across that two-year chasm in his life and mine.
"Your name is Taliesin Glyndour ap Gwyddno," he said in a clear slow voice. "You are the youngest of the seven children of your father who was Lord of Cantred Gwaelod; your mother was Cathelin, a lady of Earth." He paused to see if this struck any strings, but I shook my head; it was as if he told me the tale of an utter stranger, or else a legend of old, and after a moment more he went on with a kind of desperate patience, as if he were trying not to fright me but knew also how greatly it mattered that he get through.
"You are my fostern since we were five years old, and you are wedded to my mother?s daughter, Morguenna, with whom you have a son called Gerrans."
I stirred restively, but I could not say I had been touched by an actual memory, just so, at the mention of my mate and son; yet somehow it did not seem so unfamiliar as before.
"What was I, then, before I came here? What was my calling? And how came I here at all? And where is ?here??"
He seemed to choose his words now with even greater care. "You are the Chief Poet of Keltia. Folk sing your songs on all our worlds, and on worlds far among the stars, and for your great gifts they have named you Pen-bardd."
Taliesin Glyndour ap Gwyddno, Pen-bardd of Keltia? It sounded far too grand for the likes of me as I was here, in my well-worn (if clean) garb and untrimmed (if also clean) hair and beard. I pondered it all for a while, and he respected my silence; then I remembered that he had not answered my last questionsЧand did not appear disposed to do so just yetЧso I asked another instead. "Who, then, are you?"
An expression I had no words for crossed his face, a vivid shading of love and ruefulness, sorrow and amusement, pity and care, hurt and patience and impatience all together. Then he did something extraordinary: He reached forward and pulled my recently rediscovered gold locket out from under my leinna. But when he spoke, his voice was even and his manner plain.
"I made this for you, braud, for one thing. But for the rest of it, I am Arthur Penarvon, son of Prince Amris Pendreic and the Lady Ygrawn Tregaron, and I am Ard-righ of Keltia, King of Kelts. I have come to this placeЧhave allowed myself to be brought hereЧonly to bring you out of it. This is the castle of Oeth-Anoeth, and it is my mother?s other daughter, Marguessan, who has kept you here."
Well! This was a parcel of news and no mistaking, rather a lot to take in all at once, as you will doubtless agree. Yet what he had said carried the immediate bright ring of truth. He was the High King. He was Arthur, my brother by fostering and by marriage, and his sisterЧwho was presumably also my wife?s sisterЧhad shut me up here, for reasons I could not imagine?
"It soundsЧcorrect," I said at last, still thinking furiously. "A touch unlikely, I grant you, but correctЧ"
At that he laughedЧArthur laughed. "Now that sounds more my Tal-bachЧbut are you not wishful to know the rest of it?"
"Oh, perhaps just the tiniest bit curious; no doubt Your Majesty will tell me in royal good time."
Still grinning, he leaped up and began to pace the chamber, andЧit is hard to explainЧit was as if a shutter had blinked open inside my head, just for an instant, and I knew him. Truly knew him, knew I knew him: That pacing was a thing he often did when he needed to work things out, and very often I myself had been there to watch him do so? But then it was gone again, and I settled back expectantly on my pillows and some piled-up cloaks, hands behind my head, to listen.
"You had been sent," he began cautiously, "to a place I think I shall not speak of aloud just yet, for fear of who might be listening. There it was you had the truth of your mother, her name and arms and originsЧfor you had not known of her beforeЧand also you were given a message, information of the most terrible purpose and consequence, to bring back to me and to the Ard-rianЧ"
"Gwennach." The name was out before I even knew I had spoken, and Arthur shot me a glance like a lasra.
"Oh aye, her you rememberЧ" The tone was teasing, exasperated, mock-annoyed, but the delight in the dark eyes was very real; and so too the tiny gleam I saw of relief along with it. "Well then," he continued, "when you came to leave that place and return to us at Court, you simplyЧvanished."
I was enormously interested, and inverted my position, head to the bedfoot, flat on my front to listen in greater comfort.
"Where did I go?"
"We had not the smallest idea. You had departed, as I say, in good order and good time, and should have been back with us within hours. But you did not come, not then, not later, and we began to fear almost at once."
"What did you do?"
"We had another messenger in your steadЧagain, I think I will not name him, or herЧwho came to tell us what had befallen: that you were gone missing, and that your horses had been found wandering on the outskirts of Drum Wood. Now were we alarmed in good earnest, for Drum is many hundreds of miles from where you went missing. We mounted a search for you all across the planet, but there was no trace."
In some perverse way, I was much enjoying this. "And I was here?"
Arthur was still pacing. "Aye, but we did not yet know it. Even Morgan, your own wife, could not find you with the strongest of her magics, and she is the greatest sorcerer we now have. All she could learn was that you yet lived; no more, save that whoever held you also commanded mighty magics, and had a place to keep you proof against all comers."
At his mention of Morgan?s name, an image of the woman in my dreams, the one with dark-gold hair and the serpent ring upon her hand and the urgency in her hazel eyes, flickered across my sight. Ah, my Guenna, how could I not know you, of all folk else?