NAMER OF BEASTS, MAKER OF SOULS

THE ROMANCE OF SYLVESTER AND NIMUë

JESSICA AMANDA SALMONSON

Just as there are two Liliths – Lilith the Elder, and Lilith the Younger called also Naamah – so too there are two Merlins: Merlin Ambrosius, and Merlin Sylvester called also Celidoine. Whoever despises one history of Merlin can say, “But that was not Ambrosius, a wonderworker from birth, who saw in the stars the rise of the House of Pendragon; rather, it was Celidonius, who lived always in a forest, and never strayed.” Yet such severe dichotomies cannot be fully made, for the two Merlins are One and Immortal, just as the two Liliths are One and Immortal.

Celidoine lived in the manner of Adam before the coming of Eve, when he was a seeker not fully enlightened. Merlin the forest shepherd dwelt in the roots of ash-trees, and was King of Beasts. He knew the True Names of animals, the very names first uttered by the voice of Adam. And beasts obeyed Celidoine with such implicitness that when he went into the meadows as a herdsman, a gigantic lioness that beforetimes belonged to the Great Mother of Tyre walked with him into his fold and lay down by his feet, purring sweetly, molesting neither sheep nor cow.

And this forest-Merlin possessed a living Throne of fiery amber, having a pulsing light within; and the Throne had a voice like unto that of a sweetly loving mother who sings lullabies to her children. The Throne was hemmed in on all sides by dense thickets of hazel; and when Merlin sat thereon, only the most meditative of seekers ever saw him.

From the left side of the Mother Throne issued a fire that joined sunlight and moonlight to every earthly hearth. At the right side of the Throne there arose a silent, shimmering curtain of motionless water that joined all earthly stores of water to the sparkling, celestial river. The Throne existed at that point of vibration where Fire and Water are harmonious lovers, and from whose embrace the Existential Universe first emanated by stages and degrees in the forms of a Crown, a Key, and an Egg.

From this seat Merlin gazed outward at all things, yea, the things of All. And the All was held fast where Merlin sat, even as the spokes of a wheel are sunrays anchored to a hub.

Meanwhile Merlin’s bride dwelt in all the rivers of the world, but most especially in a mountainous lake of Celidoine’s sacred wood, much as Adam’s first wife was the Lilith who dwelt in the Sea of Reeds, from whence she held back the waters for Moses, but not for Pharaoh.

She was called the Lady of the Lake because she was like unto a Well in whose black water all celestial Wisdom is reflected. The pooled gaze of Nimuë is like a concave mirror wherein the vastness of the universe is writ small, and held fast, so that the completeness of All is visible in her merest glance. And if we may suppose God is a Great God, and Merlin a Little God, then Nimuë was the concavity by which the little knew the large. Thereby she boasted, “By Me, God made the universe.”

All great and godly consorts are brother and sister, so that Nimuë was the same, though not entirely the same, as Ganicenda, Merlin’s twin. And despite that Ganicenda was one and the same with Nimuë the Lady of the Lake, she was at the same time distinct from her.

Ganicenda was mightiest on land, for she was of the fire that dwelt in the hearth and emanated from the left side of the Throne. She did not enter into water, for she was that part of Mother Earth whose hands restrained the Flood. It was said of her that her face was in heaven, while her feet went down to Sheol; that the sun was her Face, and the moon was her Crown; and the Apples of Avillion sprang from her very footsteps.

She was a waystation on the road to Sheol, but she was not of Sheol itself. She prepared banquets and invited evildoers into her house of seven pillars, and insinuated herself upon he that was blind to spiritual treasure. By slow degrees he perceived the way of salvation, saying, “Thou art Wisdom who hast turned my road about.” But if still a fool unable to perceive purity, he says, “Thou art a Harlot!” and continues his descent. For Ganicenda was a demoness to fools as wholeheartedly as she was Divine Wisdom to those with open hearts.

In an era when Merlin, wisest of earthly beings, was called Solomon, it was of Ganicenda he sang, “My sister, my bride.” Solomon the consort of Divine Wisdom was builder of the Two Temples, the one belonging to Yahweh, and the other to Ashtaroth of Sidon, established at the behest of Naamah the Amoritess, queenmother to Solomon’s doomed son, the forerunner of Merlin’s fosterling Arthur.

And it was said that Solomon did not build his two temples by any mortal means, but that a demoness of the Danites was bound into Solomon’s service. It was she that built the Temple of Ashtaroth, while her son, a Tyrian architect, built the Temple of Yahweh in accordance with his mother’s plan.

This demoness was Solomon’s twin; for when Solomon sucked at the left teat of Bathsheba, his sister sucked at the right; and when Solomon sucked at the right, his sister sucked at the left. When she was weaned, Queen Bathsheba sent her to live in Tyre, until Solomon was capable of receiving her in the form of the Temple of Ashtaroth, as Solomon took on the form of Yahweh’s Temple.

Now Ganicenda was a huntress whose companion on the chase was Fair Arawn, Lord of Death, called Adonis in the East, otherwise Adonai Sabaoth. And Arawn said to Ganicenda, “Ha ha! Your brother Sylvester is wise, yet he has no palace. He rules beasts but hasn’t even a barn to keep them in. How can he be master of the earth when his throne is in a thicket twixt fire and wave? Ha ha! He has no palace!”

Therefore the sister-bride Ganicenda built for her brother-husband a castle out of logs, deep in Sylvester’s hidden glade within the Forest of Broceliande. Like Behemoth foraging, Ganicenda rendered bald a thousand hills in Lebanon. She bound the cedars with hazel rope to form spires and minarets and flying buttresses, with vast rooms opening into other rooms which opened into others. She built the castle in a single night, though a thousand workers in a thousand years could never have achieved so much.

The palace surrounded the Mother Throne, before which Ganicenda placed a Globe of Life that was Merlin’s footstool. And because her feet went down to Sheol, she caused to be raised from out of the earth a circle of seven pillars and laid upon them a massive, circular stone, whereon grew a shining bush hung about with hazels.

To the eye that looks but does not see, there was no castle, but a mountain that had not been there beforetimes, or an impenetrable mist into which few ventured and fewer returned with mind intact. To anyone of true vision, there it plainly stood, a gargantuan log castle with one hundred doors that opened into Everywhere, yet without windows.

Ganicenda gave no windows to the palace because Death enters through windows. By her trick of architecture, she caused Merlin to be immortal.

Soon thereafter Merlin sat in languid pose, his feet upon the globe, saying to himself, “Mine is the fairest tower in the world!” He leaned back and gazed upward through the smoke-hole in the roof, through which he read the stars. And the stars whispered to him, “Mightiness, mightiness, mightiness,” but he was not even then fully enlightened, and pondered careless interpretations by means of wild surmise.

Now Merlin of the Wood was very black, even as Nimuë of the Lake was black but comely. And Nimuë said to him, “Sylvester, Sylvester, come into my rose-petaled bower.” Merlin set down his ghastly, enormous axe that was stained with sap and blood; and he removed from himself the visage of a greybeard and cast aside his ragged garment made from skins of wolves. He revealed himself youthful, hairless, and dark as a sapphire lit by starlight from within, a beautiful giant with strength in all his limbs, including that which extended mightily from the center. Nimuë said, “Sylvester, Sylvester, lay your body on this bed of moss and flowers, your head upon my myrrh-scented pillow.”

As he lay upon her, she wrapped him in her thousand arms, her thousand legs, that were a radiating energy. He became the axle through the center of the universe. And from their glad repose, Nimuë taught the tawny Merlin all things, yea, the things of All.

She invested him with such an energetic wisdom that when they quit the bed of rose and myrrh, he said, in a voice that caressed, “You are the dancer between two armies. One of your armies is terrifying for its protective righteousness, and the other is terrifying for its unforgiving judgement. Will you continue, O Nimuë, to fill me with the Light of your Instruction, or will you in the end set upon me corrupt minions from underneath the Earth?”

As Merlin spoke, the blackness of the Lady became pale as bone, then paler, until she rushed away from him, having become a sinuous, serpentine river that flowed from out of his hands, leaving him bereft of all but her scent of myrrh, and rose, and hazel.

Then was his love for Nimuë like wormwood in his mouth. “I must rule the whole of the world to impress Nimuë the Daughter of Eve,” said Merlin. “I will perform deeds no Son of Adam hath dared before this time.”

He repaired to his log castle that had no windows, but only an opening in the roof, through which he read the stars. He saw therein that which he believed his need required, and he said, “I will upraise a barbaric bastard to be king. And through him will I hold planets in the cup of my hand, and be to Arthur like God.”

So saying, he stood abruptly, filled with false insight. The Mother Throne sank into the Earth; the glimmering sheet of water dissipated into mist; the wall of glittering fire became a pillar of smoke that rose through the star-hole of his log castle’s roof and was no more. Sylvester tore the burning thistle from off the vast stone table, and set it behind him on the ground, where it rooted itself in the place where the Throne had been, and lost its glow. Then lifting the round tabletop from off the circle of stones, he rolled it through an open door, and followed after it, vanishing forever from the forest and the sylvan glade.

Then did the River that was Nimuë became salty as from tears.

In the depths of her lake, Nimuë possessed a crystalline palace, wherein doves with jewel eyes and rose-tint feathers sang and fluttered from room to room. To the random observer on barge or bank, the castle appeared to be only an enormous grey stone. But for the visionary, the castle possessed a clarity of structure that rendered it invisible, so that all within the stone was seen: Nimuë, Queen of Depths, in the guise of Rahab the Dragon, upon her garnet throne; with birds of fire going in and out of her stormy mouth.

She pondered the treachery of the Sylvan Merlin who had turned away from a perfect, loving togetherness in favor of the world of materiality, misusing spiritual powers possessed through her. Nimuë’s gift was meant for purposes nobler than power to govern, to conquer, to amass great wealth and fame. Merlin had become a treasonous lover, an abuser of Truth, and Truth abused rises up like a lioness enraged, a cobra no longer charmed, the Dragon-mother leaping from her depths to engulf the earth with boiling floods.

Well she knew that it was not truly Sylvester who set out to upraise the barbaric Arthur. Rather, it was Ambrosius, whom Sylvester, as shapeshifter, so easily became. A true shapeshifter cannot change that which is material in his nature without changing that which is spiritual. Hence Ambrosius, contrary to Sylvester, knew not Nimuë, so was unaware by what means he misguidedly betrayed her. He did not know who or what it was that tugged at mind and heart with vague, uneasy promises of redemptive unifaction, versus threats of destruction and everlasting regret. He mistook this aching, invisible thing that pulled at him as Destiny, and could not imagine he might ever be deprived of godlike power. Poor Ambrosius! Pitiable wizard that was meant to be the living soul of nature!

With every Good that Lilith undertakes, there is a shadow underneath; and for every Evil to which Lilith aspires, a bright truth arises from it.

The two natures of Lilith, that dwelt harmoniously within Nimuë, sought foremost to assist her errant lover, so that Arthur might be illuminated in accordance with Merlin’s desire. But this achievement was to be Merlin’s greatest failure and undoing, for She simultaneously sought an unrestrained vengeance for Merlin’s faithlessness.

Thus pondering in the watery void, Nimuë struck upon a labyrinthine plan, and called forth from her womb a boychild fair and innocent, whom she named Lleminawac, “Whose Hand is Purity.” She reared the pale lad to young manliness in a twinkling, though it seemed to him like many years, and this occurred in a chamber of light beneath Loch Corrib. At length she sent him forth in a bewildered state, under numerous compulsions, and he was afterwards called Lancelot of the Lake.

Then she rode forth on a dappled mare, whose form was like smoke, with a small white hound scenting the way through darkness, and thirty long, sleek, black bitches swift upon the mare’s heals. And she came in cloudy moonlight to a menhir in a glade, breathing her Breath of Life upon it as she said, “Come forth, Baal Zephon. Come forth from your eons of slumber, bringing with you all that you have learned from the Lord of Death!”

White eyes opened in the stone’s grey surface. Moments after he was called forth, there stood a rustic knight, Sir Balin the Savage, He of the Dolorous Stroke, predestined destroyer of Castle Sangrail upon the Glassy Isle.

The white-eyed giant knelt before the Lady of the Lake. She kissed him at the left side of his throat, leaving her mark upon him. Then he strode away toward Camelot, his cloudy mind roiling like a nimbus.

And Nimuë called forth a thoughtful and fearless knight whose name was Pellinore.

He wandered idly through Cornwall and Wales until he came to the lake’s shore. He did not suspect he was beckoned, but thought only, “I have found a holy place.” He stood leaning upon a spear’s haft, the blade of which was a long as a sword, and double-edged.

He sighed in appreciation of the wildness and startling beauty of the lake. His seeker’s heart noted first the enormous stone beneath the lake. As his observance grew deeper, the stone became translucent, then transparent to the point of invisibility, so that he saw miraculous subaquatic doves flitting within crystal chambers.

At the heart of the mystic castle, coiled upon a carnelian throne, he saw Nimuë in the form of the Echidna, such as was a dragon from the waist down, and a woman of grave and terrible beauty from the waist up.

As Nimuë uncoiled herself from the throne, her tail split in two, so that she slithered weirdly upon serpentine legs around and around a spiral of crystal stairs, her upper body writhing like a black flame. The water fell away from her, so that she came upon the surface of the lake, a monstrous giantess dwarfing the tall quester.

She roared and bared two long fangs that dripped venom, dashing her head toward Pellinore as though to devour him in one bite. He raised his long-bladed spear and scuttled backward, sorely confused by the vision shifting and wavering before him; for now he perceived an obscene reptilian head turn to mark him with one dark eye. That eye glimmered as with starlight reflected in a deep well. It observed him evilly, swaying back and forth, seeking a means to strike around Pellinore’s steady spear.

In that self-same moment Sir Pellinore saw, however briefly, all things from the Beginning of Time, unto the Dissolution, and knew not merely his own destiny, but that of the Universe entire; for Time was a serpent coiled twice upon itself, and Time’s name was Nimuë.

No sooner was this known to him than his mind clamped shut over a multitude of scenes, lest a premature enlightenment destroy him as with fire. He was left with only his sense of awe for the creature that swayed before him.

A tongue like a two-tined fork licked forth. Pellinore gasped in horror of that tongue, each part long enough to wrap about him twice. His two-edged spear-blade batted the tongue with eager self-defense. As the blade swung left then right, he was bathed in blood from the gaping mouth. The fangs fell loose in the form of finely scabbarded swords whirling away through air. The twin swords splashed into the midst of the lake; and one was destined for the hand of Arthur, the other for his twin sister, called Cybele, the Morrigu, or Morgan le Faye.

The dragon dwindled until black Nimuë clad in white stood at the lakeside. Her abandoned serpent’s skin sank into the watery void; and that skin was Morgan who hid herself in an aquatic forest with one sword in her left hand, one sword in her right, waiting, waiting.

Having been doused with dragon’s blood, Pellinore found that his skin acquired a ruddy glow. Bewildered more and more, he threw aside his weapon in horror of his actions, for he saw in Nimuë’s apparition something of Stella Meris, Mother of Stars and Sea, known anciently as Ashtaroth, and afterward as Mary.

Pellinore fell to his knees, whispering, “Forgive me, My Lady. I did not know that it was You.”

Nimuë took him by his shoulders to raise him from his knees; and still she was taller than he. She bent to his throat, to the right side, and there kissed him, leaving a pale white mark. Pellinore shivered and sighed as he slipped from her embrace, falling weakly to his hands, his brow damp and his golden locks dangling from his head hung low.

Nimuë said, “From this time on, you are my champion, and may never come to harm, for you are sheathed in the blood of Rahab the Dragon-mother. There are numerous compulsions upon you, that over time, one by one, you shall feel unfold. Go forth and do slaughter for My sake, but remember this, there is one you may not slaughter, whose name is Artos of Camelot.”

He bowed his head once more in deep devotion. When he lifted his gaze, the moonlit lake was no more, nor yet the sylvan watershed. Rather, he found that he had pitched a pavilion at the ford of a brackish river that wound its way near Camelot.

*    *    *

All who tried to cross, Sir Pellinore challenged. He spared nothing of mercy, but seemed to despise all who sought the court of Arthur and his mage, Ambrosius.

A chieftain of a far country came with his squire, and saw Pellinore standing utterly naked on the bank of the ford. The wandering chieftain said, “I seek the Court of the Matchless King, to serve who rules there. I have no time to joust with madmen without armor.”

Pellinore whirled his spear three times about his head, declaiming fiercely, “There are madmen ringed everywhere about the Court you seek. No one may see to the heart of the world who cannot first defeat madness.”

The spear of the wandering chieftain broke against the ruddy chest of the naked challenger, whereas the chieftain was run through the heart, lifted into the air like a bloody flag, and tossed away as would be a worthless tattered rag. The body was carried away face down in the river, blood tinting the water all about.

The dead knight’s tearful squire ran forth with shortsword upraised; and, sobbing like an orphaned child, he strove to avenge his master. Pellinore swung once and disarmed the lad. He swung a second time, and tore open his arm. Now the young squire stopped weeping, and stood ready to be slain, his chin held in defiance.

“What is your name,” asked Pellinore.

“Girflet,” he replied.

“I will not slay you, Girflet, for you are but a child. I will let you pass, so that Arthur and his mage may learn why it has been that none have come to him by this road for many a day.”

Girflet led a horse across the ford, then mounted unsteadily to gallop away.

A champion, mighty of appearance, rode out of Camelot, his lance longer than Pellinore’s spear. And he said to the demonic guardian of the ford, “You have done harm to many that I love. Therefore have I come to sweep you from your camp by the river.”

“Know you this,” said Pellinore haughtily, astride a red roan mare. “I and this spear are baptized in dragon’s blood, and may never come to harm in this world.”

“And you know this,” was his reply. “Within me runs the very blood of dragons!”

He dashed forth upon a stallion. Pellinore met him halfway in the river. The long lance splintered upon Pellinore’s naked chest and he was not unseated from his roan. The court’s champion, winded by a blow, plunged backward into the river, his armor so heavy he could not rise easily, but might have drowned had not Pellinore gotten down from his steed and lifted the champion’s head from out of the water. Pellinore raised the visor of his fallen foe, and drew forth a dagger with which to give a coup de grace.

Swift astride a coal-black mare rode a greybeard in mage’s robes, whom Pellinore knew to be Ambrosius. From some distance closing fast, the sorcerer began shouting baleful spells that fell impotently from the ruddy skin of Pellinore. The spells in no way restrained hand or dagger, poised above an opened visor.

Addressing his fallen opponent, Pellinore said, “Before I’ve killed you, tell me who I slay, that I may pray for the easeful repose of thy spirit.”

“I am Arthur Pendragon,” said the champion, causing Pellinore to sheathe his knife. With deep chagrin he drew the fallen king to the bank of the river.

Merlin sat by the sickbed of Arthur, whose ribs were crushed. Pellinore was there as well, for Arthur, before he fell to raving, granted a king’s absolution, and invited the ruddy knight into the privileged circle.

Now Pellinore coursed about the room, filled with self-recrimination. Seeing Merlin Ambrosius so uncertain in the face of Death, Pellinore decided upon an action. He leaned close to the sweating face and matted hair of Arthur to whisper, “Your spirit must seek Nimuë, My Lady of the Lake.” Instantly the body of the injured king grew calm, as his spirit fled away from Camelot by some method Pellinore half-wittingly induced.

“Leave this room at once!” cried Merlin, who left off his murmured spells upon hearing the name of Nimuë, though he knew not why her name roused him to such a passion.

Pellinore bowed before leaving, turning in the doorway to see that Merlin strove ineffectually to rouse Arthur.

It seemed to Arthur as though he came to a beautiful glade under clouded moonlight. From out of a weird dark lake arose a pale arm which upheld the sword Caliburnus. Arthur waded into the waters and took the strange blade from the shy nymph.

He knew that he was dreaming, yet it was not wholly a dream, and he heard himself asking, as from a far place, “Art thou the Lady of the Lake that hath handed me this sword?”

“No,” replied a voice behind him. “She is not; but I am Nimuë.”

The naiad’s arm withdrew below the surface, leaving not the slightest ripple. Arthur turned about and saw a woman upon a smoky mare, with thirty black hounds and one white running close to the ground in figure eights, in and around the legs of the moveless mare.

Arthur waded from the shallows. He stood as near to her as dream allowed. She asked, “Which will you value highest, little dragon? The steel of Caliburnus, or its sheath?”

He drew forth the metal and inspected it in a shaft of moonlight. “The sheath is carved with Celtic whorls and set all about with jewels. It is too gaudy for my liking. But this metal I cannot help but admire, and shall keep it by me always.”

“One day, that blade shall break. It is the sheath you should better value. For so long as you possess the sheath, you will be invulnerable, even as you found my champion Sir Pellinore of the Glassy Isle.”

“Since you have already a Champion,” said Arthur, “what boon is left that I can offer?”

“I will ask one gift, although you can give me nothing from your present dream. I will come to you in the world of materiality, although I warrant you shall not give whatever I require.”

“I would deny you nothing,” protested Arthur.

She smiled when he said that, but there was nothing merry in her smile. She said, “If you possessed sufficient wit to ascertain your moment of crucial and difficult obedience, you would never have preferred hard steel to wisdom, for such is the true nature of the sheath you’ve dismissed as gaudy. Soon I will send to you the Giant’s Daughter to teach you the ways of wisdom. She that is Eve Incarnate will reveal to you the things of All at the halfway-place on the Road of Sheol. If you love her unreservedly, you will come in time to Michael in Heaven to stand beside him in defense of the Spirit. But if you despise your Illuminatrice, you will remain in the world to await the Dissolution, striving uselessly in behalf of Matter.”

He meant to swear to her a binding oath never to neglect the spirit nor despise his Illuminatrice. But he woke too soon, his lungs no longer burdened, the bones in his broad chest newly healed. “Such a dream!” he told a startled Ambrosius. Arthur sat up amidst the curtains of his bed, looking about excitedly. “What is that odor?” he cried out to his mage. “Is it not midnight roses, and myrrh from a distant land?”

“No, my ward, it is the scent of hazel,” said Merlin, hiding his wonderment when he saw, amidst Arthur’s coverlets, the broadsword in its jewel-encrusted sheath.

When the marriage of Arthur and Gwenhwyvar was arranged, Arthur was delighted, for it was politically an advantageous match that would bring him much land. The woman was beautiful in the bargain, and reputedly wise.

Arthur called his vassals about his throne and said, “I am to be wed in the ancient city of Trinobantes, in the Church of Stephen, upon Candlemas, during the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin. Now it cannot be that a king is married if his vassals are not. As every fighting Dane and Nord goes forth with his shieldmaiden, and every hero of the Slavs and Poles is accompanied by his guardian vila, so too must every knight of Camelot pledge himself to a lady, to make her the sovereign of his heart, the inspiration for his conduct. Therefore each of you must go forth to find fair brides. Then come all of you to Trinobantes, clad entirely in white, so that we may all be wed together.”

All knights but two repaired to private chambers to prepare themselves for travel. Of the two who stood fast by the throne, the first bore a white scar at the left of his throat. He was Balin of Caer Belli, that is, of Baal’s Castle, famous from Cornwall to Northumberland. The other was Pellinore, chieftain of the Glassy Isle and possessor of Horn Castle, he that bore a scar identical to Balin’s save only that it was on the right of his throat.

These two knights looked one another eye to eye. Although they had been friends and companions, there was suddenly a spark of enmity between them, for what cause they knew not.

“Come now,” said Arthur, “have you not ladies to pursue?”

Sir Balin murmured lowly, like the sound of a rolling earthquake, “We have one.”

Before he could explain himself, there rode into the midst of the court the Loathly Maid astride a dappled mare and armed with dagger and broadsword. She wore high boots and greaves, a coat of light mail, and over it a sleeveless tabard embroidered front and back with red poppies on a blue-green field. Her hair was caught up in a sparkling net. Her face had much of youth about it, yet was made to seem older by the way she scowled.

The hooves of the mare clattered before the throne, and Arthur was insulted that she would ride into his hall. He had heard of the Loathly Maid prior, and was fascinated by her more than he would care to admit. Her scowling wildness made her homely, but Arthur found himself wondering how she might appear if only she would smile. There was something familiar about her, though he was certain they could never have encountered one another outside of imagination.

When she dismounted, a squire scurried forth to remove the mare from the great hall. Arthur said, “Loathly Maid, why is it you wear armor and bear weapons such as deprive thee of comeliness?”

“Sir King, I am but a messenger, clad for far travel. Do you not recognize my sword?”

Arthur gasped, then felt quickly for his own sword, that leaned beside his throne. “I know you, then,” said Arthur. “If only from a dream.”

“Perhaps so; or not. This sword of mine is fused to its sheath. As yours cannot be drawn for evil purpose, mine cannot be drawn for good. Here, I will lend it to this squire called Girflet. Boy, take it. Draw the steel.”

He tugged at it, making faces and chewing his lip. Those gathered about the court laughed to see him struggle.

The Loathly Maid said, “Give it then to Arthur.”

Girflet gave the sword to the king. He looked it over with a shiver, for he would have sworn it was Caliburnus, had not that glorious weapon been ever at his side. He could not draw the blade, so handed it to Pellinore, who likewise struggled.

“Return it to me,” said the Loathly Maid, but as Pellinore moved toward her, Balin took two long strides and said, “I will try,” taking the sword from Pellinore.

The blade unsheathed easily.

“As you have seen,” said the Loathly Maid, “there is one among your vassals sufficiently wicked to draw that steel. If you happen to recall it, Sir King, you do happen to owe me one boon. I require the head of Sir Balin.”

Balin bristled. “You Salome!” he hissed.

“But you are no Saint John,” said she.

Arthur sat silent in his throne. He knew, indeed, who the Loathly Maid must truly be, and by rights he should bow to her in hard obedience. But there was a voice beckoning from the curtains at his back, from a secret chamber, and Arthur leaned to one side to better listen.

“Send her away,” the hoarse voice whispered, so that only the king heard. “If you love Me, and God, and all the things of this World such as I have brought to you, then send her away, for she is the Doom of us, young Pendragon, our Doom.”

Arthur gave no indication that his mage had counseled him. He seemed merely to be pensive, and not the least distressed, although his breast was pounding. He said, “Sir Balin is of the privileged circle, and has proven himself many times. Ask something other of me, Loathly Maid. Would you have a castle in Cornwall or southern Wales? Have you foes my captains can bring low? Would you have treasure? I warrant it is true, I owe you much.”

“As you have denied me, I will go,” she said curtly. When she turned to leave, Balin drew the black steel anew, and laid it against her throat. He said, “As you cannot have my head, you will have me entire; and if you will not have me, then I will have your head.”

“Sir Balin!” said Arthur. “Has that black blade charmed you to do evil? You are sworn, and cannot harm a lady.”

Balin dragged her by her white throat, bruising her neck in his gauntleted grasp. As he backed to the gate at the far end of the hall, he excused his actions, saying, “But this is no Lady, as you can see by her armor. She is a Knight, so I exempt her from my oath.”

When he left the hall, the clatter of hoofs told all the court Sir Balin had ridden away; and Arthur was disturbed to think one of his knights might ravage or behead a maiden. He stood from his throne and strode five steps, his visage clouded with uncertainty of action.

“For love of Me,” said the hoarse voice of Merlin. “Let Balin have her. Let them go.”

Arthur shook his head, wondering for the first time if there was not some sinister spark in the magery of his old counselor. Only Arthur heard the voice that spoke into his mind; and he realized he could not in that moment speak any word, for Merlin willed him silent.

Sir Pellinore said, “Allow me, my king, to wrest the black sword from Balin’s fist, and restore it to the Loathly Maid, that she may use it to test others. I think her not so hard as she would play, and needs now a champion to save her. Perhaps it is my fate to bring her to your wedding, and be married to her when you wed Gwenhwyvar. Say but one word, and I shall chastise Balin for his misdeed.”

Arthur still could not speak. Yet he waved his hand in dismissal, and Pellinore set out to assist the Loathly Maid.

Merlin Ambrosius in a swirl of robes came out from behind the throne. Arthur spoke to him with a petulance unseemly for a king, “How could you ask that I let Balin molest her? Until now, I thought I could deny you nothing because I love you so, and because your counsel was good. Now I see that I am under the compulsion of a sorcerer. What truly is your design?”

“Think not ill of me, young Pendragon. I am a creature, like yourself, in this material world. I live within plots and devices. I love power and treasure. But most of all, I love you, and if I have overstepped propriety this day, it is because I saw the death of me, and the death of you.”

Arthur replied, “Until today, you have sown certainty in my bosom. And see how swiftly I rise, assisted by your vision! Now I am to wed a queen whose royal lineage is Trojan and whose estates will treble the breadth of lands I rule. Soon all Britain will bow to me! What was there in the Loathly Maid that tells you your prophecies must change?”

“Prophecies – and machinations,” the sorcerer confessed. “What makes them change is a desire I cannot name, let alone suppress. Gleefully would I follow that Loathly Maid to ruin. You recognized her, I know, as the Lady of the Lake, who until this hour I had never met. Yet when I saw her, even so disguised, I felt as though I had known her as of old, and that I owed her far more than simple mortal words can say. I knew at once that I must enter into my final dotage, wherein I will love her to distraction, caring nothing for what you and I have built together, let alone for anything remaining to be built.”

There were tears upon the sorcerer’s cheeks, and Arthur could not help but forgive him.

Merlin said, “It is best she be destroyed, for otherwise she will weep with mighty queens wailing on all sides of your funeral barge. If Balin kills her, I will grieve. Now that I have seen her, and heard her voice, the best I can hope is to waste away in a quiet place of the forest, surrounded by bards who will sing soothing lies of my greatness. So it is you I seek to save, young Pendragon, and not myself, for I cannot in any case be with you always.”

Sir Pellinore, Lord of Horn Castle, forgot at once his purpose of rescuing the Loathly Maid, for Merlin’s thought raced forth to make him neglectful of this goal. He recalled, instead, that all the vassals of Arthur’s court were sent forth to find worthy damsels, then rally together on Candlemas, in Trinobantes, for the collective wedding.

Pellinore set out, therefore, to find a bride. Within a few days, he came to a castle ruled by young Queen Ettard, who inherited a throne from an enfeebled father. She refused ever to wed, lest power pass out of her hands.

Wintry clouds ringed about Ettard’s mountain stronghold. Indeed, the whole of her country seemed to float on cloud. On the parapet of a castle tower was a man playing mournfully upon a bagpipe, with such a look of sadness about him that Pellinore shuddered to see him standing there so straight and strong and full of woe.

Pellinore was received at court. No sooner had he set eyes upon Queen Ettard than he knew he loved her more than his life. He put forth a poetic plea for her hand, naming sundry islands whose inhabitants knew him as King Pelleas. He boasted of the diamond of his realm, the Glassy Isle, where stood the glorious Castle of the Horn of Amalthea, alluding to rare treasures not wholly of this earth. And he begged that she come with him on Candlemas to be wed along with all the vassals that belonged to Arthur, so that the High King’s marriage, together with their own, would make the whole land fruitive.

Despite the sincerity in his voice, and the beauty of his ruddy face, there was nevertheless something weird about such an intense and instantaneous affection. Although Ettard thought him irrational, she did not despise him immediately. Many had proposed to her on former occasions, each unable to disguise his obvious designs, gazing not so much at her as at the strength of her vassals and the breadth of her lands. But this knight who presently knelt before her was like a holy fool requiring nothing for himself, while offering all.

For one moment she considered, mayhap, she need not rule alone, but might do well to wed her fortunes to the Lord of the Glassy Isle.

She was swift to suppress such sentimental weakness, suspecting as she did that some witch was playing her a joke, having fed the foolish knight potions of love before sending him, in this bewildered state, to Queen Ettard’s fastness. Therefore she spoke to him as though in a rage, and commanded her vassals strip Pellinore of his armor, beat him savagely, and throw him naked from the battlements.

He lay on a slope below the battlements, spread out in winter’s brittle scrub. He was unable to move for a long while, not because of any injury, for he had none, but because his heart was broken. Come evening, he roused himself from depths of ennui, and said to himself, “I must eat, to build my strength for tomorrow’s encounter with Ettard, fairest of all queens.”

A stag wandered into sight. Pellinore leapt upon its shoulder and twisted its head in his arms. With knifeless hands he skinned the beast and, while meat roasted over a pit, sat scraping the skin with a stone, until he had for himself a rude garment.

At dawn, feeling restored and hopeful, he bathed beneath the frigid waterfall, then wrapped the deerskin about him and affixed the antlers to his head. The forelegs of the skin still had bones within, so that a stiff leg hung at each of Pellinore’s shoulders, giving him, in silhouette, the look of a four-armed man. In a like manner, he dragged behind him the unboned hindlegs of the stag. And near his buttocks hung the white flag of the stagskin’s tail.

Having made himself as presentable as he could – and he did look like a handsome mountain priest of a hunter’s mystery cult – he went to the portcullis of Ettard’s fastness. When none would open it for him, he raised the portcullis by brute strength, causing damage to the cogs of the wheel, and inducing guards to rush about in confusion.

Once more he stood before Ettard’s throne. She saw that he lacked the least bruise from his beating or from the far plunge from the battlements. She was cunningly eager to test the limits of his tremendous strength. Because he loved her greatly, he was willing to submit to all abuse. She berated him for breaking the fastness gate, and charged him with sundry minor crimes of offense before sentencing him harshly. He was bound tightly into his deerskin garment so that he looked like a cocoon of something part stag, part man, that might in the springtime hatch into an even more monstrous being. Then he was tied with a long rope by his feet to the saddle of a horse. One of Ettard’s vassals dragged him out from the fortressed castle and down a mountain road.

How he shouted as his body bounced and scraped along! But the words he bellowed were all devoid of complaint; rather, words of adoration echoed against the cliffs and through the valleys so that peasants far and near raised their heads from their plows and wondered whether it be fairies or divinities upon the mountains courting.

When the bounding horse rounded a curve, Pellinore was flung over the high road’s ledge, and hung head-down two hundred feet in air. The queen’s knight dismounted and peered from the ledge, laughing at the pendulous Pellinore and, with one sweep of the sword, cut him loose.

For several hours he struggled at the base of the cliff amidst bits of broken antler, striving to get out of the stagskin. His fruitless effort was overheard by a knight journeying on a lower road that circumvented the country of Queen Ettard.

It was shy of dusk when the knight climbed onto the crag and unbound Pellinore. The two men looked at one another face to face in mutual surprise.

“I am grateful for my release, Sir Gawain! Good fate that you were passing by!”

“Who has done this terrible thing to you?” asked Gawain, deeply alarmed; and Pellinore told of his love for Queen Ettard, and his willingness to suffer all indignity, if only to see her a few moments every day.

“But this cannot be!” said Gawain. “How I could lash her with my tongue for her unfeeling deeds!”

“Do not think ill of her, I beg you; think, rather, of what high regard I feel.”

“Then you must allow me to intercede in your behalf. I will visit this terrible queen who has enticed your heart so cruelly, and beg that she treat you with goodness and reason, giving better consideration to your suit.”

Pellinore’s highest optimism was restored by Gawain’s promise. He said, “Even if you fail to melt her snowy heart to my favor, I will nevertheless be in your debt forever, because you strove sincerely.”

When Gawain regained his horse and started for the higher road to Ettard’s castle, Pellinore sat alone on a rocky crag as night fell and stars winked score by score into existence. He listened some while to the distant, mournful Piper of the Parapet, until at length Pellinore began to sing of his love for Queen Ettard. From cliff to cliff his song echoed into darkness, and all the countryside heard the tragic rhyme.

At dawn he came again to Ettard’s castle, this time clad in a grass mat salvaged from the floor of an abandoned wattle hut; and for his girdle, a frayed rope was hung with bits of broken antler. His hair was wild, and his repulsive garment crawled with lice, but still his face was beautiful as he set his doting gaze upon the immovable queen.

“In that you have come to me like Samson,” she said, “you must be seeking your Delilah. Therefore tell me the secret of your invulnerability, that I may finally destroy you.”

“As I love you well,” said Pellinore, “I can deny you nothing. Take the bejewelled dagger from off your thigh and plunge it just here, into the white spot on the right side of my throat. If you can do so without regret, I will die.”

“Come forth, then,” she said coldly. He obeyed, going upon one knee. She drew forth the dagger and held it ready to stab his throat. For one long moment she gazed into his innocent eyes. Then she struck swift as an adder. He fell to his side with the blade deep in his neck.

He was tossed from the rear wall of the castle, where it was supposed wolves would clean his bones. He lay quietly all that day and through the night, with only the rotted garment of woven grass to defend him from the cold. His glassy eyes watched the track of the gauzy moon behind the clouds. Before the sun arose, it began to snow, and soon he was dusted over with whiteness. He knew that he was dying. Assuredly Gawain would hear what had happened, and come seeking him; but it would be too late.

The knife in his neck was perturbing. With an effort such as exceeded all his valorous deeds in service of King Arthur, he raised an arm, drew the dagger out of his neck, and kissed the jeweled hilt where Ettard’s pretty hand had held it.

An anchorite came down from the higher mountain to look for edible bits of garbage that were commonly thrown over the castle’s rear wall. He saw Pellinore and stood by him a long while, wondering if he were living or dead. The anchorite wore a ragged cloth no better suited to the temperature than Pellinore’s cloak of grass and snow. And though the hermit was thin to the bone, he was strong even so, and lifted Pellinore onto his back, carrying him upward to a hermit’s cell in the face of a cliff.

Elsewhere in Arthur’s expanding realm, Sir Balin sought adventure; and his quest was marked by error and darkness. The whole length of his story need not be told, of how he slew the good and avenged those of little merit; inspired the suicides of pure maidens and brave knights; decapitated lovers in their bowers; and in the end slew even his beloved brother, and died miserably beside him. Who is to say that any of it would have happened, had not the Loathly Maid brought him a sword of blackest iron.

Upon that fateful day when first he kidnapped the maiden, she said, as they rode upon the trail, “Sir Balin, you have a good sword at your side, by which you have performed mightily. You do not require this dark sword of mine. So I beseech thee, but just this once, return my sword to me.”

“It is a good sword, and I have gained it fairly,” said Balin, filled with self-deception. “I will keep it beside my other, and be called the Knight of the Two Swords, until there is someone strong enough to wrest the black sword from me.”

“Then know that by your choosing you must slay with that accursed sword one whom you best love, then lie down beside him to die, with heart full of regrets. And the one to wrest the black sword from your stiff dead fingers will be Morgan le Faye, who will make good use of the jeweled sheath, the form of which is the similitude of the scabbard of Caliburnus.”

“I will not be frightened by a witch’s vision,” said Balin, lowering a malignant brow.

The Loathly Maid rode upon the rump of Balin’s horse, her back to his. They travelled far together, and through many of his deeds, dark and otherwise, she was there. As days slid by, she seemed not to be offended if he called her My Lady, though as lovers they were chaste; and he counted on her daily for multitudinous assistance.

Never again, after their first meeting, when he pressed his hand around her throat, did he ever think to abuse her, for he was more than a little afraid what she might do. This fear of her came about on the second day out from Arthur’s court.

As they rode together on one horse, they came to a sea-green field of poppies. As it was still winter, the vision was unlikely and startling. As if the unseasonable blossoming was an insufficient strangeness, there stood, along both sides of Roman cobbles, thirty lean soldiers at regular intervals, each clad in armor of gleaming jet, looking as though they wore the very Night as protection from the sun. And there was one more knight, smaller than the rest, more elegant, whose armor was alabaster.

The thirty-one knights were so devoid of motion that Balin thought them statues until, as he cantered closer, the thirty in jet turned their heads as with one motion, raised their spears, and stepped into the road facing his direction.

He reined aside his steed and said to the Loathly Maid, “Slide down and wait among the poppies. I will fight these weird knights one by one.”

“You will not,” said the Loathly Maid at his back. Then she called forth, “Let us pass, for Sir Balin is under my protection.”

The thirty knights in jet stood off the road again. The one in alabaster strode forth, leading a dappled mare belonging to the Loathly. Maid. She slid down from Balin’s horse and mounted her own. In the same moment, the thirty-one raised their visors, and Balin saw that each had faces of beardless youths – no, they were maidens! – their beauty flawed by the dark round eyes of bitches.

They held their spears aloft so that the Loathly Maid passed underneath the shafts. Balin, full of trepidations, followed humbly. As he and the Loathly Maid neared the forest beyond the red-specked field called Lyll’s Meadow, he turned to look behind. He saw no knights by the road, but a white scenting-hound fleeing amidst the poppies, and thirty black bitches in pursuit of some invisible prey.

And Balin’s knees were quaking in their greaves.

*    *    *

One evening, not long after Sir Balin slew a knight errant in fair if unnecessarily mortal combat, he and the Loathly Maid were reclining in a pavilion which the freshly deposed knight had pitched alongside a serpentine river. The pleasing sounds of rushing water and evening songbirds eased Balin’s mood. He wanted to speak endearments to the Loathly Maid; but he saw she was already sleeping, and thought it best not to rouse her with such backwoods twaddle as must pass for poetry from his lips.

With deep sighs of affection he observed her still body. She frightened people, even as did he, so he thought they were a perfect match. He wanted to take her to the city of Trinobantes on Candlemas, and there be wed to her, even as Arthur would be wed. That day approached, yet Balin had not been able to ask, for fear of her reply.

As he watched her unmoving body, he was gripped by a fear dread that she had died. He wetted his palm and slowly moved his hand before her face, trying to feel a breath, but felt nothing.

In that very moment a terrific vision sent him reeling backward, so that he lay sprawled in a corner of the pavilion with mouth agape. It seemed as though the Loathly Maid burst apart like a chrysalid, and from within her arose a woman whose beauty was exceedingly great, her garment swirling about her as though she stood within a gale.

Yet the Loathly Maid had not moved, had certainly not burst asunder. She merely took a long wakeless breath, as though for her a dream had just then ended, and her sleep grew deeper.

The woman who stood between Balin and the Loathly Maid was no spirit, he was certain; she was as much of flesh as he.

“Who are you, and what, that comes forth from out of my lady?”

“Do you not know me?” said Nimuë.

“Are you the sorceress, Morgan le Faye, come to wrest the black sword from my dead hands?”

Nimuë smiled at that, and pitied Balin his many fears.

“No, I am not the Morrigu, and you are not a ghost. I am the Lady of the Lake that gave you life. This young amazon, who I do perceive you love, is but one of my many selves, such as I have often shed as serpents slough old skins. Yet she is separate from me as well, for serpents do not take up old cloaks again. You have never asked her for her name, so I will tell you it is Lyll, the Lady of Poppies. She has her own history, and will tell it to you, if you ask, and truly care to know all that she has known. You need not be so shy with her, for I leave her at your side for the sake of your illumination. Speak to her warmly, and give up your fear of her powers. While it is true she is not the best part of Me, neither is she entirely the worst. She will love you gladly with encouragement, for at base we demonkind are angels.”

“Is she, then, a portion of my awful curse?”

“She is your consolation. You may not have long together. So make all you can of your time, and do everything with grace.”

“And you?” asked Balin. “Why have you shed her now?”

“As you are kind enough to wonder, I will tell you only what Lyll by her gift was this moment dreaming. The Lord of Horn Castle has been slain by cruel Queen Ettard, who is another of my sloughed skins. As I desire Pellinore for my husband, I must lead him back from death.”

“As you once restored my life,” said Balin, remembering.

“Not quite as I made you. But you must forget all that,” said Nimuë. “Now sleep, so that when next you see me, you will think it our first meeting.”

Nimuë faded like a shadow, like a dream, and sank into the floor of the pavilion as Sir Balin closed his eyes.

“Not long after the Beginning of Days, when first humanity learned to murder, Adam in his grief for Abel separated himself from the Bright Mother. He dwelt for one-hundred twenty-six years with Naamah, on whom he sired a multitude of demons, who dwell yet upon the earth and in the sea, continuing their allegiance to the Mother of Darkness.”

Pellinore heard this sermon in an unlit place, from the lips of the sainted anchorite David, bastard son of Nonita, abbess of Ty Gwyn, who some have called Queen of Elves. The voice of David was soft and insinuating, inducing a quiet state so that Pellinore would not move his neck, which David had dressed with healing herbs.

“Darkness is not a fearful thing, but is only Light Unmanifest; for Darkness and Light are each the mother of the other. So it was that Eve, when Adam abandoned her, dwelt in the Cave of Treasure with a serpent, whose name was Emmanuel. And she brought forth a multitude of demonesses, who run in and out between the pretty toes of She Whose Feet Go Down To Sheol, and Whose Head Is In The Stars; for Eve sent her dark daughters into the hollow of the world, beneath the Sea of Reeds, to be wetnursed and schooled by Adam’s gloomy paramour. And these demonesses are fair maidens that bear torches in the world below, such as may be seen as stars reflected in the depth of a well.”

Now as he learned these mysteries, it seemed to Pellinore that he got up and left the cliffwall cell. He was walking through a forest on a clear night without moon or stars. He came out of the forest onto a little-used road that was overgrown with weeds, and saw thereon, some distance down the way, a maiden holding a firebrand aloft.

In the light of her torch he saw that she was comely, but dressed in sackcloth with ashes on her head. She did not beckon to him, but when she turned her face away and began to walk along the weedy lane, he knew he was meant to follow.

In his current dreamy state, it was difficult to quicken his pace. Yet the road became less difficult as he drew nearer the torch-bearer, although once, when he looked behind, he saw that tall briars blocked the path behind him, springing from wherever he set his foot. And he saw, too, caught among the thorns, with a black sword swinging impotently in his left hand, and a bright steel blade in his right, the pathetic spirit of Sir Balin, whose eyes were white and whose armor was like carven stone.

Eventually Pellinore came alongside the torchbearer, and matched his step to hers. He tried to speak, but he was in a soundless place, and could not hear the flutter of the torch, nor any foot tread, nor so little as his own heartbeat or breath. The damsel tarried at a bend and raised one arm to shove aside the writhing vines at the side of the narrow road. Pellinore stepped through the opening, but the maiden did not come after.

Moonlight was restored to the world, as was the sound of wind through branches, though as yet there was no heartbeat or breath within him. He saw Ettard’s fastness in the distance, and Saint David’s Cliff beyond, with the whole of the countryside made silvery by a planter’s moon.

His spirit sought David’s cell, knowing he must return to his ailing flesh, or die with all his quests incomplete. He was flying over the castle, drawn toward the high cliff, when he was suddenly overcome by an urge to interrupt his flight. He had to see the beautiful Ettard peaceful in her bed, that his soul might worship hers. Down he flew and down until he peered in at a narrow window with its tinted pane opened, and its draperies parted wide.

He saw Gawain, friend and fellow knight of Arthur’s court, upon a fine broad bed, sleeping at the side of Queen Ettard. The wraith of Pellinore stepped through the window into the room. His spirit-heart was leaden. He hung his head, weighted with melancholy. He did not care, in that moment, whether or not he was alive.

Then he looked about the room, that was filled with Queen Ettard’s trophies, and saw his own sword hanging on a wall, among many. He pointed his spirit-hand toward his sword and it drifted away from the wall, floating to the bed where it hovered point-down above the throat of Sir Gawain.

Temptation was mighty, but Pellinore would not slay his faithless friend. In the next moment he let the swordpoint hover over Queen Ettard, imagining the blade plunging once, withdrawing, then plunging once again, gouging out her eyes. He despised Ettard with an intensity equal to his former love, for Merlin’s spell that had long held him thrall was lifted by tragic revelation.

He slowly changed the position of the sword, which lowered horizontally, until it lay with flatside across the throats of the restful couple, doing them no harm; but upon waking, both would know Pellinore might have slain them.

His spirit flew from the castle straight into the cliff, where Saint David saw the wounded knight’s still body lurch into wakefulness. Pellinore felt the bandage at his neck and asked hoarsely, “How long has it been?”

“Many days and nights, my friend, and more than once I thought you dead.”

“As I truly would have been,” said Pellinore, rising weakly to his knees, “had I succumbed to blind revenge. Even now, a part of me is dead, for I have returned to the world of the living without love, and am bereft.”

“Then I commend you, Sir Knight, to the Queen of the World, Our Blessed Virgin Maria Sophia, who knows all things of the light, and all things of the darkness. Let us pray that in days to come, you may plumb these and other mysteries without so grave a portion of pain.”

On Candlemas day, the knights gathered in Trinobantes. Their damsels went into the Church of Saint Stephen when the sun was yet showing, but the knights were for some while kept away. They spent the sunlight hours with laughter and field sports, jousting without malice, while all the ravens of England gathered in Trinobantes to watch them play, and caw their raucous approvals.

At evening they took off their armor and clad themselves in bleached linen. They came into the dark, dark church, whose tinted windows had been covered, so that even starlight did not find entry. They could not see, but their mouths were watering from the odors of a waiting meal; and they heard the Bishop of Canterbury as he intoned, “Saint Februaria, Mother of Dispatch! Saint Demetria, Mother of Maiden Death! Queen Maria, Mother of Jesu! Saint Fauna, Mother of the rainsoaked Pan! Come forth with Thy heavenly light to ease our dreadful darkness!”

The knights heard the hollow grinding sound of a sliding grate. The hair of their napes pricked with expectation when up from the crypts beneath the church came Brides in White, one after the other, each bearing a green taper. The Archbishop said, “And when the days of Her purification were fulfilled, She came from out of the darkness, with grain issuing from out of Her Holy Womb, beckoned to the Light of God.”

The brides placed their green candles throughout the banquet-set cathedral, while acolytes brought trays of white candles, arranging them everywhere in tiers. Arthur’s knights were stunned by the eerie beauty of the thousand scattered lights. And visible on each of ten tables were roasted lambs stuffed with winter apples and partridges, upon beds of crescent cakes, and tankards of wine set all around.

The bishop concluded, “And She came up to Jerusalem, where She held forth a bundle of grain, and said, ‘This is My Son, for whom my soul is pierced in seven places. I consent to his death, so that his Flesh may be eaten, and his Blood refresh thy lips.’”

Each of the knights was joined at table by his perfect bride. Balin had his Dame Lyll, who was not so loathly dressed in white. Pellinore was with Nimuë. Sir Gawain took the hand of Dame Ragnall. Sir Kay was with Sgoidamur the Lady of the Bridleless Mule. Sir Gareth was with Lady Lionessa. Sir Agravaine stood by Lady Laurel. Sir Gaheris smiled beside his Lady Linette. One hundred knights in all, with one hundred damsels; and each bride brought into her marriage lands and castles for husbands to protect and to render into service of their liege lord, King Arthur.

When the Archbishop left off his blessings, and as the expectant gathering awaited the arrival of Arthur and the Giant’s Daughter, many embraces were shared between strong men, and many an introduction was given. Old wounds of pride were forgotten, with promise that all the baronies of Britain would be given unity by the weddings of dames and knights of every royal house.

“And you love him, though he stole your sword?” said Pellinore laughing; and Lyll replied, “I am the spirit of the dismal sword, so it was I that Balin captured from the start.”

Balin said, “And you, Sir Pellinore, you have won the love of the mysterious Nimuë of the Hidden Country! Has she pledged her secret lands to you, and have you seen them, and are they all beneath the lochs?”

“It was just like this,” said Pellinore in famous spirit. “I was dying of a wound, and the herbs of Saint David were insufficient for my cure. But every night in my fever I saw a woman of dream hovering about me in sackcloth, with ashes on her head. I thrashed and raved to David, ‘Tell me! Who is she!’ as he held me to the floor of the cell and told me there was no one there. Then one morning I awoke from alternating comas and mad ravings knowing I was well, though extremely weak. Right then, who do you think it was that found her way to the hermit’s nest? It was the very woman of my dream, though in the dream she was black, and Nimuë is pale. She brought my sword, steed, and armor, which had formerly been stolen and which I’d had no expectation of recovering. I asked how she knew where to find me; she said she was led to me by a poppy’s glamor. I knew at once no Dane possessed a greater shieldmaiden, and no Pole a more valiant vila. If ever I have loved another than Nimuë, it was due only to some awful spell best left forgot.”

All grew silent when Arthur entered to join the Archbishop at the head of the gathering. He wore the same plain linen as his knights, having added only a crown of willow withes.

The glory of the night belonged to Gwenhwyvar, who entered from the vestry to stand by Arthur. Her glow dimmed the brightness of the candles and her presence illuminated Arthur. Her hair hung down in braided cornrows, woven with sheaves of grain, all golden and bright as an angel’s halo. She was exactly as tall as Arthur; and judging by their supernal beauty side by side, they might have been twin divinities born of the same First Thought.

The acolytes moved swiftly and unobtrusively around the edge of the cathedral, drawing the tapestries aside from leaded glass so that tinted portraits, lighted from without by moon and stars, smiled upon the congregation from every angle. Saints, heroes and angels cast blessings with their shining hands, settling peacefulness upon every groom and bride.

Then all were wed as one, with the nation likewise knitted. When the joyous deed was done, Pellinore whispered to Nimuë a thing he thought he must have heard in dream. “Darkness is Light Unmanifest,” he said, then: “This night burns brighter in my heart than any sunlit day.”

Of the rest of the long night’s Lupercalia, no bard has dared to sing, nor scarcely hinted; for hymns were sung to Februaria and Fauna and Demetria and Maria and Brigit of the Two Countenances, as one hundred and one sacred couples went out of the Church of Stephen and scattered to all the farms around Trinobantes.

As they traipsed along merrily in full delight, they sang an ancient hymn that goes, “We are the sons of Benjamin, we are the daughters of Shiloh,” knights and their dames in turn. Then all lay down amidst new-sown fields and rutted in the furrows.

And it was seen by many who raised their heads from rutting that a gigantic stag was chased by the edge of the forest. It gave a belling cry and lowered its head to battle thirty sleek black bitches, and one white scenting-hound. Wedged within the antlers was a cross, with the hairless sylvan Merlin on it.

The scenting-hound leapt off the ground to clamp jaws tight upon the throat of the tormented prey. The stag went down and vanished in the midst of black bitches.

The Tor of the Glassy Isle was like the long back of a whale beached amidst swamplands. The sides of the Tor were terraced, and upon the terraces were apple trees in full bloom, having the appearance, from a great distance, of barnacles on the beached whale’s hide. The terraces encircled the whole of the great mound in the form of an elaborate maze or cultic causeway patterned upon complicated knotwork, broken in places by passage of long ages, and called by the peasants, from time immemorial, The Roof of the Labyrinth.

Across the generations, the ancient apple trees spread their seed from off the Tor to fill the spaces between the swamps, so that the young forests surrounding the Castle of the Horn constituted a fruit-bearing wilderness. This forest of plenty required no tending, save only that they received the enriching prayers of monks who dwelt by the Church of Our Lady of Apples, established on a site sacred from a time older than myth.

When apples ripened, serfs came in service of King Pelleas, which was the name by which they knew Sir Pellinore of the Round Table. They were allowed to keep a goodly share of the harvest, so that everywhere on the Glassy Isle there were none dissatisfied or willing to revolt.

The Castle of the Horn looked as though it were not made of stone and mortar, but of ivy – a leafy structure of organic parapets and crenelated walls fashioned by shears of a colossal gardener. The highest of the grape-laden greeny towers rivalled the heights of the Apple Tor. And this topiary castle was encircled by a moat thickly covered over with waterlilies in concentric circles of white, pale pink, and yellow.

Nine elfin priestesses arose from out of a secret place within the Tor, to dance around and round the humpy peak, their sweet voices heralding spring. Chief among the Nine was Morganna, who was the warlike Morrigu grown beautiful and tame amidst the flowers. Two of her unearthly followers bore in their slender arms a cornucopia made from the one horn of a fabulous beast, engraved with mystic whorls akin to those which mazed the Tor, and having three stout legs to stand on. This horn, immovable by impure hands, was weightless to the good of heart; and every autumn it was taken under the mound by Morganna’s party until, at spring’s return, it was restored to the Castle.

Down from the Tor they danced and kicked their heels as three of the Nine played upon flutes, and three slapped tambourines. They followed the winding paths from terrace to terrace, as all the while the Morrigu drew handfuls of flowers from out of the ceaseless fountain that was the Ivory Horn. As the petals were cast to the wind, they were carried merrily across the countryside, adhering to branches that yesterday were bare.

All along their route, they flowered the Glassy Isle, until at last they arrived at the lowered bridge of the ivyed castle. Therein nobles had gathered from near and far for the festive occasion of the Return of the Ivory Horn to the House of King Pelleas and Queen Vivian.

In a large courtyard of the castle, celebratory jousts were in progress. Many valorous companions of the King arrived from their own estates and baronies that they might struggle in the tournament, to please their own fair ladies, and to cast eager eyes upon the Castle’s celestial treasures that were laid out annually for public viewing.

Along the ivy-hung galleries overlooking the courtyard observant guests were seated. With them was Pelleas whose crown was draped with flowers and Vivian whose crown was wound about with grape vines. The elfin priestess Morganna went about the tables pouring an endless stream of purple liquor from the Ivory Horn into upheld cups. Her eight companions danced and piped among guests idling throughout the castle.

With a cry half of anguish, half of pleasure, a knight was unseated from his horse. It was Sir Bediver, the Knight With One Hand, who lay laughing at his own defeat; for it had seemed to him no one had done him battle, despite his fall.

In a swirl of refracting light, Bediver’s opponent reappeared with steed, having dropped his diaphanous cape from off his shoulders. The champion of the joust was Sir Garlan, Knight of the Magic Cloak. He rode below the galleries, saluting first his queen, then the king who was his brother, and finally his chosen lady, who threw him down a scarf.

Among the knights at table sat Sir Balin, who had come from Northumberland with his Lady Lyll. He had two swords sheathed over his shoulder and was clad in full armor. He stood to challenge Sir Garlan, then descended the stairs from the upper gallery to mount a readied horse.

A squire came forth with shield, but Balin refused it. This made the company grow still and lean attentively across the balustrades, for Balin was too serious. Without a shield he might not be as safely unhorsed.

As Sir Garlan began to raise his cloak of invisibility, Balin said, “Are you too cowardly to fight without magic?”

The audience held its breath. No one had ever before criticized the king’s brother.

“Do not be rude and unseemly, Sir Balin, at my brother’s feast. I am famous for my cloak; you, for your broad chest as tough as stone and your white eyes as piercing as two swords. You will not make your skin soft for my lance, and I will not throw down my cloak.”

So saying, the cloak whirled about Garlan. With a momentary scattering of rainbow flashes, the knight and steed vanished.

Lyll dropped her scarf to Balin, who caught it on a breeze, and tied it about his white eyes, so that he might pursue the encounter without misleading tricks of vision. The young squire handed him a wooden lance, with which Balin rode to a far corner of the yard and took his post, blindly facing the center of the yard.

He kept his horse perfectly still until he heard the clatter of hoofs before him. Then he spurred his steed into that sound. He felt a lance tear through his surcoat and shatter on his armor. His own lance drove hard against a shield with such precision that it was not deflected. He heard Sir Garlan’s grunting as he was flung to the packed earth.

When Balin took the scarf from his eyes, he saw the horse rendered visible, with no one on it; but Garlan was still unseen. Balin dismounted and kicked about the dust where he thought Garlan must have fallen.

Sparks flew unexpectedly from Balin’s shoulder armor, causing him to turn about and confront – nothing. Before he had fully drawn the iron sword in his left hand, he was stabbed in the hinge of his armor under the arm, though no harm was done to his stone-hard body. Then as his right hand drew the sword of bright steel from across his shoulder, he was struck in the hinge of a legguard with sufficient force that he plunged to one knee.

He stood swiftly, his two broadswords whirling front and back, protecting himself on all sides. When Balin’s right-hand sword perchance struck Garlan’s unseen weapon, Balin’s left-hand sword jabbed instantly into the airy space.

Garlan cried out. Blood appeared upon the cloak of invisibility, a red smear upheld as a feather in a draft. Balin used the flat sides of his two swords to swat again and again that bloody spot, until Garlan submitted, and drew off his cloak begging mercy, clutching his wounded arm.

Balin put boot behind Garlan’s leg and shoved him unchivalrously to the ground. Lady Lyll was standing at the edge of the upper gallery. She removed from under her garment the tip of a broken lance and dropped it to Balin, who caught it and with one powerful swift motion pierced Garlan’s breastplate and drove the point into his heart.

Knights of Horn Castle swarmed into the courtyard from all sides, horrified by Balin’s action, ready to avenge the king’s brother. Pelleas stayed their hands, saying, “Stand back from him! His flesh is granite. You could never kill him even were he stripped of armor and bound helplessly before you. Sir Balin! Why have you slain my brother?”

Balin answered, “He used his magic perfidiously when he came upon one of my companions, driving a lance into his back, then rode on, committing further mayhem without semblance of knightly valor. He may have told you his exploits were otherwise, but I saw with these white eyes as the unsuspected lance erupted from the chest of my companion-in-arms. Therefore I have slain the villainous Garlan with the point of the same lance that slew my friend.”

Pelleas came down from the gallery, tearing flowers from his crown. He said, “If it is as you say, then there is something of justice in your actions. Nevertheless, you have done it in my castle in a day of joyous revelry. It cannot be forgiven.”

“I had no choice, Sir Pellinore!” said Balin with alarm. “He has never been known to fight fairly in an open field. Here, at least, between these courtyard walls, I could hear his every movement.”

A squire ran into the courtyard from the armory, bearing the famed spear of Pelleas, that had been, like himself, bathed in the blood of the dragon. “Were I merely Sir Pellinore,” he said, “I might have taken this issue differently. But here I am King Pelleas, and cannot pardon such an affront to my people’s feastday.”

Sir Balin, unused to the necessity of ducking blows, darted awkwardly to one side, and received Pelleas’ spear under his arm. His eyes went wide with momentary alarm, jolted by the pain. He rushed forward and struck the Lord of Horn Castle hard against the chest with one sword then the other. The sword of steel shattered; the iron sword rang out and stung Balin’s fingers. Pelleas, though without armor, was entirely uninjured.

As Balin fell back, Pelleas’ spear swept across his face, drawing blood from a nick on his forehead.

Lady Lyll was no longer in the gallery. She ran through the interior of the castle, encountering no one, as all were pressed to windows overlooking the courtyard. She came to an open room where the castle’s treasures were laid out for viewing.

Surrounding a golden table were the Nine Elfin Priestesses, whose charming fay beauty appeared a little wilted. They had stationed their Ivory Horn in a place of honor upon the golden table alongside the Cup and the Spear.

“Let Balin die,” said Morganna, tears upon her cheeks. “If you will do so, you will spare him much tragedy and pain.”

“I will not,” said Lyll. “King Pelleas fights with insufficient honor, knowing as he does how vastly his enchanted spear outranks my husband’s pair of swords. I am aware that the spear among these treasures is the equal of Pelleas’ Dragon Spear. Do not try to keep me from taking it to Balin and lend fairness to the duel.”

The Nine spoke as with one voice, “We cannot keep you from this Spear, dipped in the Blood of the Lamb. It is immovable to anyone not fated by its power.”

Morganna continued, “To win the Spear, you must show strength sufficient to gaze into the Well of the World, that is this Stone Chalice, and not be laid low by revelation. As you approach the Golden Table, know that the Spear is Pelleas King of Apples; the Chalice is Queen Vivian the Lady of the Lake; and I am this Horn, Morganna, Queen of Earthly Plenitude and Earthly Wont.”

Seemingly the least of the Three Treasures, the Well of the World looked like nothing but a crudely primitive mortar, lacking for a pestle. It may have been as old as the World herself, fashioned from the stuff of the First Creation.

Lyll gazed into terrifying depths. She saw therein, hung in space, the Crown, the Key, the Egg.

Before her alarmed and watchful gaze, the egg burst asunder, flinging far the Crown and Key. Out of the shattered Egg sprang forth the dreadful serpent Plague upon whose tail the Earth depended.

When Lyll raised her head from peering into the dreadful cosmos, her dark hair was shot with streaks of white. She could no longer scowl as the Loathly Maid, for she had obtained an enlightenment that made her holy, and she was wholly beautiful. She said to Morganna, “You are the World Egg that houses the Dragon, and the Dragon is Nimuë.”

“We are the Fate of Arthur,” the Nine intoned, and Morganna added, “Upon this golden table, when all other treasures of the world are swept away, I and my sisterhood will lay out Arthur as the Last Treasure of the World, healed of earthly suffering, eternal and undying, but without thought, without motion, hidden in the labyrinth of the blossoming Tor, upon his golden bier. When his time is renewed, he will attend the final battle at the Mountain of Megiddo, where he must choose to fight for Michael, or for Satan, whose natures are intertwined, so that the choosing will never be so clear and certain as first may seem.”

Lyll replied, “I care not what happens in the Time of Dissolution, for I and my Lord are alive today, and I wouldst keep it so.”

Hearing these unhappy words, the elfin priestesses lowered their faces, and drew dark veils upon their heads.

Dame Lyll took up the Spear of the Lamb’s Blood and tossed it expertly through a window. When it struck the ground outside, the earth trembled with warning. Sir Balin dropped his black sword and the broken hilt of steel to take up the Spear of the Lamb as match against the Spear of the Dragon. He parried once then sank the spearpoint into King Pelleas’ inner thigh.

Balin could not withdraw the spear. He leapt away unarmed, fearful of the swipe of the Dragon Spear. Pelleas did not continue the dreadful duel. He fell heavily to both knees and laid his spear on the ground at his left. With bloodless hands, he drew the Lamb’s Spear from out of his groin, and lay it at his right-hand side. His flushed red face had grown aged. His lion’s mane became thin brittle straw beneath a tarnished crown.

He said, “Yours, Sir Balin, is the Dolorous Stroke. You have wounded the Spring, that Spring may smile no more.”

Then Pelleas raised palsied hands toward his dour, beloved queen. Nimuë looked on him with pity as she sang, “I gaze on the Lamb that hath been pierced. I weep for Him, as for an only son. There is mournfulness in Avillion, as all the country mourns, knowing that Castle Sangrail, the House of Brave Pellinore, hath fallen into pieces on the ground.”

Then she leapt from the gallery and flew upward, up, in the shape of a numinous white raven; and Pelleas lowered his arms and bowed his head, finding himself bereft of all the things by which he knew himself to exist.

The rustling of doom caused Balin to look along the enclosing towers. Ivy swiftly faded from green to yellow, then fell crisp and brown from tendrils rooted destructively in mortar. The earth heaved and rumbled; the castle bucked; towers leaned perilously. Balin shouted helplessly as a beam broke loose above the gallery, striking the Lady of Poppies a mortal blow. Before he had taken two steps toward the place where her shattered body was flung, the first of the toppling towers filled the courtyard with rubble, pressing Balin beneath heavy stones, where he lay weeping and unable to move.

The night full of stars draped herself onto the world without prelude of dusk. Screaming faces withdrew from every window above the courtyard. The remaining towers were tumbling; the whole of the castle was collapsing into itself. These many who arrived as celebrants fled now in stark panic, colliding with one another in buckling, pitch-dark hallways. Blocks of stone and heavy beams of timber came down upon them, crushing mortal flesh into pulp and splintered bone.

Nine only left the castle before the drawbridge fell into the roiling, murky moat. Like pallbearers, eight of the elfin priestesses strode solemnly, carrying the Golden Table upraised to their shoulders. The ninth, Morganna, led them through a night filled with cries from all points of the countryside.

Upon the Golden Table sat the Well of the World and the Ivory Horn of Spring. As the grim procession wound along the road between increasingly fetid swamplands, toward the Apple Tor, blossoms withered prematurely, setting no fruit, scenting the night not with perfume, but mildew and decay.

When the Nine bleak maids reached the foot of the Tor, Morganna with wild hair and fingers like the claws of a falcon lifted the Well of the World from off the table and set it into the ground. It at once became the Chalice Well, a fountain going into the depths of the womb of the Earth. And into the Well she threw the Horn of Spring, where it fell and fell forever, until it reached the stars.

Blight spread swiftly throughout Britain. The trouble was known as far away as Camelot even before the dust had settled around the ruins of Horn Castle. Merlin Ambrosius, awakening on his couch, was chilled to the bone. He went out of Arthur’s castle, shifting his shape as he walked along the road.

He came to the shore of the sea, having upon him the form of a barren mule. A barge awaited, and his unshod hooves clattered thereon. There was no mast for sail, but the currents bore the little barge along the coast, upon a route Arthur must someday follow. For three days the mule observed the coastline, that looked all burnt, for every plant and tree was blackened. Already a great number of people were dead of a virulent pox, and widows wailed lamentations from every hill.

On the third day the barge brought the mule to the Glassy Isle. It leapt ashore and plodded into cesspools that until lately were healthy swamps colored with irises and lilies. Then the mule passed through forests of dead trees whose twisted limbs beseeched the deaf of heaven.

Arriving at heaps of rubble covered with tendrils of stiffened vines and rotted grapes, the mule began braying loudly, and kicked angrily at blocks of stone. Small though the mule was, his kicks were mighty, and stones were flung about the landscape, revealing corpse upon rancid corpse.

When Sir Balin was uncovered, he rose at once, and thought how strange it was that a mule should be his savior.

Using a length of timber for a lever, Balin raised stones from off the Maimed King. When Pelleas was freed, he nevertheless lay without movement, staring at the sun, and Balin could not gain any response by speaking or prodding. It passed through his mind to replace the heavy cairn upon the half-living king.

It would be several weeks before Balin heard of the first foul deeds of an insane champion calling himself the Red Knight of the North, whose armor was lacquered crimson and whose roan’s trappings were carmine set about with garnets and rubies. The Red Knight was a monster with a festering wound beyond all healing, who went forth in a constant rage of vengeful agony.

And Balin then would know, without wanting to know it, that he should never have raised the stones from off the maimed and moaning Pellinore. But upon the day when a mule brought salvation to Balin, he felt he owed a like deed to another.

He found also Lyll’s body. It terrified him to discover she was more beautiful in death than ever he had seen her in life. He did not know she had seen into the Well of the World, so he thought her peaceful repose proved her preference for the boon companion Death above the ill-fated Balin.

Full of guilty sorrows, he laid his beloved wife across the mule’s swayed back and led the beast toward Northumberland.

He was troubled by all that he saw along the way, knowing too well his part in it, though still unable to turn aside from his lamentable destiny. He abandoned the mule at the border of his country, and carried his broken Lady to a poppy field that she had planted soon after they were wed. Here he buried her under a stone table, then sat atop the table a long while moaning the wordless dirge of a hurt animal.

Ambrosius, who knew himself as God, wondered at such powers as had set themselves against him. When, he wondered, had he first blinded himself to the many chinks and breaches in his initially efficacious spells? Where was it that his splendidly woven magicks first began to fail? By whose interference had his overall design transformed against his will?

He lacked the true heart of the quester, and knew not what way to turn, but sought aimlessly in darkness and wild places, seeking an unknown Something he might not recognize even if it spoke.

Of Arthur’s further history, he took no part, and did not observe the last unravelling of the dream of Camelot. He was not there to warn Arthur not to spite himself in webs of anger and betrayal. He did not come in time to save the king in the Battle of Camlann. Long before full half the Round Table knights died of morbid quests, and before Queen Morgan preserved her brother upon a golden slab in the cavern beneath Avillion, Ambrosius forgot even that Arthur ever lived, or what he ever hoped to gain by so much sorcery.

He merely wandered gloomy haunts, as mindless as the will o’ the wisp. One day he sat atop fallen cedar logs and broken doorways of some extravagant but ruined house, wondering why he, of all divinities, should be denied the key to all mystery. He had thought himself ageless, but now his spine was bent and arthritic; his white beard hung below his bony knees; and he was a most terrible giant hermit feared by all who saw his hoary head raised amidst mountains.

Logs shifted under him, as though they were a heap of thick serpents, but he was not unperched. There came to him from out of a nearby hazel thicket a beautiful young nymph who sat beside him speechless, gazing at him in a tender, wistful manner. After some while, her presence began to annoy him. He tried to set upon her a withering look; but his faded eyes could not focus in her direction.

She said, “Remember, Sylvester, when you feasted only on fruit and herbs, and all beasts were your companions? Now, Ambrosius, you have eaten bloody venison and spurn the berries of the bramble-bush.”

As she spoke, there sprouted and matured before him a bush with six branches, hung all about with hazelnuts. Merlin turned his face away; and because of his disdain, the brightness of the bush went out. Where a moment before hazels grew, now there were only branches full of thorns.

“You, my precious Merlin, have becme the Death of Planets,” said the nymph, whose seductive intonation increasingly fouled his mood. “You might have been the Lover of the World; but you have refashioned yourself, and now cannot be more than Her deathless sacrifice.”

“Destroy me, I care not,” said the raspy voice of the old man. “You have taken everything. Why should I alone continue?”

“It was not I that slew the beauty of the world,” said the sweet nymph, tempting Merlin with her white shoulder. “Rather, the selfish tyranny of mortals has laid low the earth. That selfishness is manifest in you.”

Her words angered him more deeply than weary old age could express. And due to his strengthless anger, he found himself entangled in the thorny bush that was cold as ice.

Arising from out of the ground were stone pillars that surrounded Merlin of the Bramble-bush.

The nymph was weeping copiously as she became a ribboned sheet of water reaching skyward. The deathless soul of the sorcerer heard, from within that celestian fount, the nymph’s murmured enticements, “Sylvester, Sylvester, come into my rose-petaled bower.” But it was Ambrosius who replied, “Away from me, Harlot,” and sank forever beneath the world.