CAULDRON OF LIGHT

DIANA L. PAXSON

Light glittered on the water, starry flashes reflecting a shifting glimmer across rock and tree and the face of the man who stood knee-deep in the pool. He blinked once, then stilled, allowing awareness to sink past that shimmering surface, seeking the silver flicker of the fish that drifted, suspended between earth and air, curving with the current of the stream.

He had been a fish once, a great salmon, returning home from the sea. He knew the myriad subtle messages of taste and touch and pressure, more meaningful to him now than the ways of courts and kings. His mind became that of the salmon once more, while his hands, forgotten, drifted against the current like water-weed.

The trout grew still, attention focused on the ceiling of light. The mind of the man floated with it, perceived the ripple as a fly touched the surface. Silver sides flexed; hands flickered, scooping the trout out of its element. It wriggled furiously, protesting the impossible emptiness of the world.

Merlin straightened, his mind snapping free as the trout gasped out its life on the grass. He watched in unwilling sympathy – most of his life he had been out of his element, but Arthur, whom he had counselled and defended, was grown now, and a king. The mage was become a stranger to Camelot, his rightful home the wildwood, where he could be both more, and less, than a man.

He winced as back muscles began to complain against the unnatural angle he had forced them to maintain, and stretched, long arms, pelted with hair whose brown was grizzled now to grey, reaching for the sky. When he was a child, he thought ruefully, he could do this all afternoon. Where once he had been as flexible as a sapling, he was aging like an old tree. How old, he wondered? An oak could live until felled by disease or lightning or the hand of man, growing larger and stronger with each year. He had fortunately ceased to grow when he was a half a head taller than most men, and hair and beard had silvered. But he was still strong.

Merlin looked at the trout, whose colours were dulling already. One small fish was not much of a meal. The day before had been stormy, and he had huddled in his cave, fasting. He wondered if he could manage another fish, and bent once more to the stream.

Wind gusted suddenly, whispering in the trees, lifting the sheltering branches so that light flared blindingly from the surface of the pool. He swayed, all other awareness fleeing as his mind filled with light. The whisper of wind became a woman’s voice that pierced the soul—

“Merlin! The Grail is gone! Merlin, help me!’’

The wind passed; the branches, subsiding, veiled his sight. The vision released him then, and he collapsed gently into the pool.

The shock of the cold water brought Merlin upright, gasping. On her holy isle, the Lady of the Lake guarded the sacred Cauldron which was also called the Grail. He could not believe anyone had breached its wardings, but the Hallows sometimes moved of their own will. When they did so, kingdoms could fall.

He clambered out of the pool, shaking himself like a wet dog. First, he needed food, and then he would be on his way. Skewering the trout on a piece of green wood, he began to kindle a fire.

As Merlin moved south, he heard rumours. They spread across the land like a river in floodtime, murky with silt and choked with debris. Neither the Lady nor the Grail were at the Lake, cupped by its northern mountains. The only certainty was that the Hallow had appeared at Camelot, and now it was gone. Half of Arthur’s war band, it was said, had ridden out to search for it.

What brave men might accomplish, they would do. It seemed to Merlin that he would accomplish little by running after them. Better to be still, and wait for wisdom like a fisherman at a weir. In time, he heard that the Cauldron had mysteriously returned to the Isle of Maidens. But men still sought the Grail. To Merlin, its true nature was now an even greater mystery.

As summer faded into fall, he settled finally in the woods near the ruined fortress of Mediolanum, where the road that angled across southern Britannia toward Londinium met the longer tracks that linked the north with the south and west. There he built himself a little hut of branches and heaped stones. Less visible, but stronger, was the net of power that he laid across the roads to catch the fragments of truth and the men who bore them.

On an autumn afternoon Merlin heard a horse approaching. The hoofbeats stopped outside his hut, and someone called for water. He emerged from the hut, head bowed and body hidden by the voluminous white wool of a Druid’s robe, a wooden bowl brimming in his hands.

“Holy father, I thank you, in Christ’s name—”

Merlin repressed a smile, understanding that the boy had taken him for one of those hermits who sought the wilderness, finding even a monastery too worldly for their needs. No doubt he had joined Arthur’s band since the last time Merlin visited the king.

“In the name of the god you serve, you are welcome,” he answered gravely. “You look weary. Alight, and share my simple meal, and tell me of your journey.”

“I suppose it is no sin to accept the hospitality of a holy man,” the boy said, frowning. “My name is Amminius son of Lucius, a warrior of Arthur’s Companions, and indeed I am in need of counsel.”

“Then you are welcome,” Merlin answered him.

“It is not a journey, but a quest that I am on,” said Amminius when he had slaked his thirst and they were seated by the hearth. “Perhaps you will have heard?”

Merlin nodded, and put another stick on the fire. “There have been many rumours. What did you see?”

“It was the night of the great storm—” the young man began. “All the folk in Camelot were gathered in the great hall, listening to the timbers groan and the wind whistle through the thatching, and praying to whatever gods they knew. It was close to midnight when the doors were flung open. A woman screamed – we all thought our last hour had come. And then there was a great light, and a stillness, as if we lay in the eye of the storm. The light moved through the hall, and before each one, it paused . . .” He lifted the beaker to his lips and drank.

“And what was it?” asked Merlin then.

“In truth, I do not know,” Amminius replied. “I know what I saw and heard, but I have spoken to others, whose experience was quite different. To me,” he continued, “it was a chalice, such as the priest uses at the mass. But this one was far richer, and it shone. And there was a Voice that spoke to me,” he added, but he did not tell what it had said.

Merlin did not expect it. His own visions had taught him how difficult it was to convey their real meaning in human words.

“I think it was the Cup of Christ’s passion that I saw, but on the next day word came that the Cauldron they keep at the Isle of Maidens had been stolen. So I do not know now what it is I am searching for, or why—”

“Do you not? When you spoke, the memory of what you saw shone in your eyes. To deny that truth is to deny yourself!”

Amminius shook his head. “I was brought up in the faith, but I have never been devout. I always meant to be a warrior . . .”

“And now—”

“Now my only desire is to see that vision again! But I know that once I am back at court I will forget, and so I wander—”

“You are not searching for the Grail, you are fleeing the world.” Merlin searched his memory for the teachings of the priests he had heard at the court of Vor-Tigernus when he was young. “If you follow this path you will remain in limbo, able to attain neither heaven nor hell.”

“But what must I do?”

Merlin shook his head. He could preach Christian doctrine, but he refused to take responsibility for this boy’s soul. “You must choose . . .”

For a long moment Amminius sat with head bowed. When he looked up at last, the memory of glory shone in his eyes.

“Oh, good father, thank you!” His voice rang out joyously. “In the hills above my home there is a cave. I will go there, and live on berries and roots and the water from the stream. And perhaps, if I purify my heart and wait patiently, the Grail will come to me . . .”

Merlin stared at him in amazement. “Do not thank me, but the god within you—” he said at last. He has found his Grail, he thought, though he may not yet realize it. But if it is the Chalice of the Christians, what then is the Cauldron?

On the heels of a winter storm another traveller found his way to Merlin’s door. This one was older, a dour, heavyset man called Cunobelin, who had served with Arthur since the Saxon wars. In the old days, the mage had known him well. The mage came upon him as he led a limping horse down the road.

“What are you doing here?” he said as Merlin moved out from among the leafless trees. Cunobelin had never been one of those who made the sign of the Horns if they touched the mage’s shadow, nor did he follow the Christians. Indeed, Merlin doubted the man had faith in anything at all.

“Waiting for you—” he answered. “Or someone like you. I have a shelter nearby. Come rest your horse and eat a bowl of soup by my fire.”

For a moment Cunobelin considered him, then he nodded. “A friendly face and a little warmth will be welcome. This wind blows chill.”

Merlin waited until the man had eaten before he questioned him about the Grail.

“What did I see?” Cunobelin laughed harshly. “A bright light that moved through the hall. So in truth I do not know what we are all seeking, but it is clear that I am not the one to find it. I am returning now to Camelot.”

“You speak as one who has failed—”

“Is it not so?” Cunobelin asked bitterly.

“Perhaps you have been looking in the wrong place.”

“What do you mean?” The warrior frowned.

“I think that you are one who must be able to see the object of his adoration. It is in this world, not the Other, that you will find what you are looking for.”

“The sun and the moon are still in the heavens, as anyone can see, but no one has suggested we search for them!’’

Merlin shook his head. “Surely the heavens hold wonders, but they do not make your spirit soar. Think back. Is there anything else that has made you feel as you did in the moment when the light passed through the hall? A person, an experience – in the Otherworld, things do not have to be alike to be the same.”

“A person?” whispered Cunobelin. He closed his eyes. “Nothing that anyone else would think worth remembering . . .” For a time he was silent. When he spoke again, it was as one in a dream.

“I was very young when I first came to Londinium to serve the king. The lads wormed out of me that I’d never lain with a woman, and they took me to a courtesan. I was ashamed of my ignorance, but she . . . was kind to me. And when she received me into her arms, it was like a great light breaking around me . . .” He shook his head and looked up, an unaccustomed colour in his cheeks. “But surely to remember that is blasphemy, when everyone is talking of a holy thing!”

“For you, her embrace was holy,” said Merlin. “Why have you never married? You deny your nature.”

“What could I offer a wife, when I was always going off to war? But I’ve dreamed of finding a woman who would come with me to one of those abandoned farms I’ve seen in my travels and make it bloom again.” He stopped short, staring at Merlin. “Have you bespelled me? I have never told anyone these things!”

“I have cast no spells,” the mage said softly. “I only point the way—”

Cunobelin was never seen at Arthur’s court again. All that winter season, other men came to Merlin’s hut in the forest, eager or disillusioned, proud in their strength or feverish with wounds. The weak he nursed and the strong he counselled, and from each one he learned something of the Hallow they were all seeking.

He had heard once an ancient tale of the blind men who were asked to describe an elephant, their reports all different, and all accurate descriptions of the part of the beast each man had found. On the Isle of Maidens, the priestesses guarded a Cauldron. He had seen it, and knew it for a thing of power. But was that the Grail, or only one appearance of something whose true nature could only be known by combining the myriad visions of those to whom it called?

Merlin’s last visitor came riding by on a day when spring had drawn her first veil of greenery across the land and the skies were clamorous with returning waterfowl, borne north on the warm breath of the wind. Merlin had thrown off the heavy Druid’s robe and donned his garment of skins. The hut where he had spent the winter seemed cramped and odorous, as tattered as the winter pelts the beasts were shedding to make way for the new growth of spring. His muscles twitched with the urge to action, yet still he tarried. When he met the young warrior’s dazzled gaze, he understood what he had been waiting for.

“Eliuc—” Softly he called his name, waiting for the wide eyes to track slowly downward, for recognition to focus there.

“It is you . . .” the boy said at last. “I sought you . . . because you might understand . . .”

“Why? Who do you think I am?”

“You are the Wild Man of the Woods, yourself half of faerie,” the answer came.

Merlin grunted. This boy was too young to recognize him, but in a way, his words were true.

“Were you not one of those who rode out to seek the Grail? Your face seems to say that you have found it—” he said when the horse had been unsaddled and tethered to graze.

Eliuc sank down on an outcropping of stone. “I found . . . something. It haunts my dreams.” His skin was luminous in the dappled shade of the young leaves.

“Tell me—”

Haltingly, the story came – the privations of a quest pursued through winter weather until despair was near. Eliuc had taken refuge at last with a shepherd, earning his keep by guarding the ewes as they dropped their lambs and keeping off the wolves. When the weather warmed, he set off again, letting the horse choose the way.

One night, he had made camp beside a small spring. He woke to the touch of moonlight that glimmered through the branches and reflected from the pool in a haze of light. He sat up, staring, for in that light a figure was forming, slender, luminous, beautiful beyond mortal ken.

“She smiled at me . . . she held out a vessel of pure silver, rimmed with river pearls, and I took it from her hand. It was brimming with what looked like water, but the taste of it overwhelmed my senses. I was lost, to myself, to the world, overcome by joy.”

“And then?” asked Merlin, seeing him begin to drown once more in that rapture.

“Then it was morning, and I was alone.” The desolation in Eliuc’s tone made the mage’s eyes prick in sympathy. “For a week I waited, but she did not come again. Since then I have wandered. Food has no savour, even my dreams are pale echoes of what I have seen. Was it in truth the Grail that I found?”

“For you it was,” Merlin said gravely. “You have tasted the wine of the Otherworld. Be grateful for what you have seen, and do not seek to recapture it.”

“That is cold comfort! How can I live in a world from which the magic is gone?”

“There are many kinds of magic—” Merlin began, but Eliuc shook his head.

“I will go back to the spring. Perhaps if I am patient, one day she will open the door to me once more!” He leapt to his feet, eyes once more afire with remembered glory, and before the mage could speak again, had run to his horse and was gone.

Arthur will not thank me for this day’s work, Merlin thought sadly. The king’s men had sought the Grail to bring healing to the kingdom, but too many, one way or another, had been lost to king and kin. To each of them, it brought the fulfilment most desired – for one, the Christos, for another, a woman’s body, and the ecstasy of the Otherworld for a third.

It was time for the hermit to leave the forest. The lure had become too strong – the Grail had appeared to him, if only through other men’s eyes, and he had now no choice but to search for it.

What face, he wondered, will the Grail wear for me?

Merlin’s way led toward the Lake and the Isle of Maidens. The Grail, it was clear, was not the same as the Cauldron, and yet by taking the Cauldron into the lands of mortal men, a way had been opened for the Grail to appear, establishing a connection between the Hallow and the men who sought it. For all his wizardry, he could take no path but the one the Hallow had already chosen.

He came in the evening, as the light of the setting sun, reflected from the heavens, was filling the Lake with gold.

Merlin had known the Lady since they both were young, and insofar as it was given to him to feel for a mortal woman, loved her. There had always been respect between them, but she faced him with hostility now.

“By blood you are priest of the Sword, and the god of the Saxons has given you his spear. By what right do you claim access to the Cauldron? It is a Woman’s Mystery!”

“A woman bears the Grail, but it calls to men and women alike. Arthur is the Defender of Britannia, but I am his mage. When magic touches the land, it is my responsibility, and my right, to understand it. And it is your duty as Guardian of one of the Hallows to assist me.”

For a long moment she looked at him, and then she sighed. “Perhaps it is so. Certainly I have not been so secure a custodian as I might wish, though the Goddess brought good from mischance in the end. But your reasoning does not entirely convince me – the lands of men have not seen you for years on end. Men thought you dead, or a legend. Why should the Grail draw you back?”

“Why, indeed? You are right to wonder. I have lived in the forest as a Wild Man, forgetting my humanity. I thought I would die there, but I am still strong. Perhaps the Grail will show me, as it has shown to others, a way I may be released from the world.”

And when he had said that, the priestess ceased to argue, and together they waited for night to fall.

“What is it that you expect to see?” asked the Lady of the Lake as she led him to the dell below the cave.

“A vessel, a container, a passage between the worlds . . .”

“And does the greatest mage in Britannia need such devices for his journeying?” Her voice was cool, but in her words he heard echoes of the Otherworld, and the hair on his body stood out as if from cold.

“For this journey, I do.”

“I will tell you once more. If it was the Cauldron that passed through Arthur’s hall that night, it was borne by no mortal hand.”

“Have you lost faith in your own Hallow, Lady?” He shook his head. “This is not the end of Desire, but this is where I must begin.”

The opening to the cave was a dark slash in the rough rock that pushed through the turf of the hill. Torches set to either side hissed and flickered, sending ruddy light pooling across the worn stone. Merlin sank down upon the boulder that faced it, keeping his breathing long and slow. But he could not control the pounding of his heart.

The silence deepened until he could hear the whisper of fine linen as the wind stirred the Lady’s veil. In the shadows of the cave mouth, something pale was moving. A female form, swathed in white, emerged from the darkness, torchlight flaring across the polished silver surface of the vessel she bore. She came to Merlin and set the Cauldron gently on the slab of stone before him.

It was half-filled with water.

“It is only water from the spring,” said the Lady. “What meaning you find there must come from within.”

“I know it.” Merlin lifted his hands in blessing and invocation. “By fire and water I summon truth to me, by the radiance of the spirit and the darkness of the womb.”

He felt, rather than heard, her leaving him. And then he was alone with the ripple of light on water and the surrounding shadows.

He saw, first, his own features, wild hair twining in distorted spirals like some ancient carving. Beneath the heavy brows, his eyes captured light from the torches’ flames. Merlin continued to gaze, breath passing in a slow and regular rhythm that barely stirred the hair of his beard, waiting for the water to still, the fires to burn low, until he saw only the shimmer of backlit hair like a halo around a mask of darkness.

Gazing, he allowed his consciousness to sink into those depths, until he no longer saw the Cauldron or his own face within it. Presently new images formed within the shadow – stars in a night sky and the dim shapes of trees, a face framed by the rim of a cauldron.

But the cauldron he looked into was wrought of black iron, and the face reflected from the steaming brew it contained was that of a boy.

“Stir it, Viaun, you wretched chid! Have not I told you the liquid must always be kept moving?” A white hand reachd past his head and cast pungent leaves of mugwort into the cauldron. The hand of Cerituend . . .

His grip tightened convulsively on the ladle and he began to draw it sunwise through the liquid once more. Already the sharp scent of the herb was melding with others – mints and sages, leek, salt and darker, heavier odours he did not want to name. It smelled like magic.

“It will not be long now. Do not fail me! I will be back soon!” Cerituend’s voice was like honey, like the scent of her, fading as she moved away. A memory that was not his own made him shiver with mingled fear and desire.

Merlin who was Viaun reached out to the nearby woodpile and slid more sticks beneath the pregnant bulge of the cauldron. Soon the brew was bubbling gently. The roiling of the liquid intensified. He slowed his stirring, trying to calm it. Perhaps he should not have added more fuel to the fire. She had said the potion was almost complete – as he stared into the cauldron, its contents heaved as if that last addition had awakened it. The potion was meant to give her son wisdom in compensation for his ugly countenance. No wonder it seemed to have a life of its own.

He looked nervously over his shoulder, involved entirely in the vision now. Black branches netted the dim blue of the evening sky. And in that instant of inattention, he heard the bubbling of the potion intensify. In the next moment it was boiling over, splashing his hand. He squealed with pain and clapped it to his lips.

The concentrated liquid scalded, at once tart and sweet, bland and salty. Then the confusion of flavours became a maelstrom of meaning. He understood everything, the movements of the heavens and the growth of herbs, the ways of all beasts and the tongues of men. He comprehended, in that moment, the meaning of the Grail, and beyond that, overwhelming him with terror, knew that he had stolen the magic of the Goddess, and that She would destroy him.

He was Viaun and Merlin, he was every man who has transgressed Women’s Mysteries. He dropped the ladle on the grass and began to run.

For a time he ran blindly, but soon enough his new knowledge told him that She was coming after him. He became a hare, coursing swiftly through the undergrowth. But the Goddess had turned herself to a lean hound bitch to run him down. When he leaped skyward as a sparrow, she became a plummeting hawk. He was the stag that fled the wolf-bitch, the salmon that twisted away from the otter’s tooth, the vole that fled the owl. All these he had been, in that other lifetime when he was Merlin. As Viaun, he was pushed from transformation to transformation, fleeing the terrible Mother down the cycles of the years.

In the end he no longer possessed the strength or invention to continue his evasions. His last defence was to turn himself to something insignificant beyond her attention, one grain in a pile of corn. And there he waited, until the huge black hen pecked her way across the farmyard and swallowed him up into the dark.

For a time beyond time the soul that had been Merlin lay cradled in the pregnant womb of the World. And in that darkness came visions. He saw men of Camelot still searching for the Grail, some to give up the quest in despair, some to die, and some, under a dozen different guises, to find what they most desired. The veil of Time swirled, and he saw Arthur facing Mordred upon a bloody field. He struggled then, sure he could stop it if only he were free, and saw an oak tree in the heart of the forest whose trunk had the shape of a man.

“Have I failed entirely?’’ his spirit cried then. “Shall Camelot fall, and all my wisdom pass with it from the world?’’

“From whence did that wisdom come?’’ asked the Darkness.

After a time, Merlin answered slowly, “From the Cauldron, which holds the distilled essence of the earth.”

“Then how can it be lost? It is men’s knowledge of that wisdom that will disappear . . .”

“I have lived long, but this body is not immortal—”

“Then take a new one. I have taught you the way of transformation.” The answer, slow and amused, came to him. “Let your power be rooted in the land, and your spirit pass to the child of prophecy. Your wisdom will never be forgotten, so long as you remember that it came from Me . . .”

Merlin floated, thinking. The warm darkness that surrounded him was changing, becoming the slow surge of the sea. At last a final question came to him. Other men had asked whom the Grail served, but that was not what he needed to know.

“Who are you?’’

The attention of that Other intensified. Once more Merlin tried to get away, but how could he flee that which contained him?

“I am the Quest, and I am the Grail. Men seek Me, not knowing that they will gain their desire only when I find them. They flee, not knowing that flight forces the transformation that will bring them to My arms. I am the Divine Darkness and the Light that shines beyond the circles of the world. I am the Truth beyond all goddesses and gods. I am the Mystery . . .’’

The rhythmic motion grew more violent. Dizzied, Merlin struggled against the membrane that contained him.

“Who—” he cried. “Who is the Child of Prophecy?’’

He was dying. He was being born. A last convulsion slammed him hard against an unyielding surface. The darkness that surrounded him was torn open and someone lifted him into the air.

“Look!” came a voice. “It is the Radiant Brow!”

When Merlin could think again, he found himself lying tangled in his cloak on the stones before the cave. The Lady of the Lake knelt beside him, but the Cauldron was gone. Had he dreamed its presence? It did not matter, for the vision it had given him still shimmered in memory.

“Are you all right?” she asked, helping him to sit up again. “Did you learn what you needed to know? You began to struggle, and then you cried out and collapsed.”

“I think so . . .” he nodded. “Help me to rise and I will tell you what I saw, lest it disappear like a dream.”

He finished his story sitting with the Lady on the stone bench on the lakeshore, watching the sky grow bright above the eastern hills.

“I must go back to Arthur’s court,” Merlin said finally. “I cannot change what is to come, but I can bear witness, and pass to the Child of Prophecy the story . . . .”

“But who is he?” asked the Lady.

“He is Taliesin, the babe with the Radiant Brow. In forty years, he will be born—for the first time. And I will be waiting to teach him, for in body and spirit I will be one with this land. That body will die, but his spirit, my spirit, will come again and again, renewing the ancient magic, rebirthing the old stories into the world . . .”

A fish leaped from the Lake before them, the twisting body flaring gold. In the next moment it fell back again, but the impact sent ripples circling outward across the still water long after the

fish itself had disappeared.

“And did you find what you were looking for?”

The mage nodded, gazing out across the shining expanse

of water cupped within its sheltering hills. This is the Grail, he

thought. The Cauldron and all the other vessels, are but analogues

for this precious and lovely world, which is itself a sacrament, given

meaning by the life it holds.

And in that moment the sun lifted above the rim of the hill, and

sky and water and Merlin’s spirit were filled with light.