

The Sword of the Fifth Element

by Peter Harris

The story of one man's search for Truth at any cost. How he found true Love, which is without price, and in so doing fulfilled his destiny.

What some early readers have said:

"...The story is extraordinary, fabulous... I'm flabbergasted. I couldn't put it down... I was riveted. And deeply touched... It felt very personal... More than anything I want to thank you... Because in reading it I was transported into Faerie..."

Rachel Taylor, muse

"I was refreshed and delighted by this timely parable that is full of hope. It lights up the path that leads us back to Love, and helps to restore reverence for the feminine principle."

Anna Harris, doctor

"A truly beautiful message; there is a wonderful flow in this masterpiece that resonates very clearly in my heart."

Jeff Clarkson, musician

Copyright Peter Harris 2005, 2007, 2012

Formerly published as The Icon of Ainenia

Smashwords edition

Published by Eutopia Press

P.O. Box 37, Kaiwaka

Northland 0542

New Zealand

Ph 09 4312 178

www.wizardofeutopia.com

email: wizardofeutopia@gmail.com

Preface

In the telling of this story, it was inevitable that some greater matters should be mentioned, concerning the ancient Order of the Makers and the Nine Worlds. If this becomes a distraction, my apologies in advance; if (as I hope will be the case) you find yourself wishing to know more, there is a remedy: the Apples of Aeden epic, set in the present time and based on the historical source book, the Ennead of Aeden. Volume one, The Girl and the Guardian, is now available, as an ebook.

P.J.H.

Table of Contents

1 The Sword of Truth

2 The Cave of the Goddess

3 The Rat and the Rose

4 The Valley of the Perfect Woman

5 Rosa's Ruin

6 The Book of the Quintessence

7 The Road to Avalon

8 The Sisters of Renunciation

9 The Icon-makers

10 The Anklebiter

11 The Thorn Convent

12 The Wrath of Ainenia

13 The Faerie Child

14 The Vow

15 The Shattered Sword

Epilogue

1

The Sword of Truth

Some time after the fall of Rome, but well before the age of Steam, in a small village in a lost land to the west of Belerion, that is, present-day Cornwall, lived a strange, restless young man and his good wife Rosa.

The man's name was Calibur, an odd name for a Briton; he could read, which was also unusual for that time; and he was left-handed, which was considered by many to be sinister, and to cause a predisposition to the fey.

He was a swordsmith by profession, as his father had been. For, as his father had always told him, he had to eat, and the raiding barbarians had to be fought.

But Calibur hated the strife and killing for which the beautiful blades were forged. Above all things he wanted to grasp the Sword of Truth, to cut open the Book of the World and read what was written there, and learn what lay beyond. In fact, he wanted to apprehend the very essence of 'The One'. For his father, before he died, had taught him to read from a precious fragment of the Enneads of Plotinus the Greek, who taught that the Soul of the World, the souls of men, and matter, all emanated from The One, and to it will one day return. Calibur dreamed that once he knew the Source of all things, he could forge one pure, perfect and magical Sword to drive out the barbarians, end all conflict forever and reveal the One Truth to all lands. That, he thought, was the only hope for a solution to the murderous follies of mankind.

So he was ever driven to make one more sword, whether the last had sold or not, working late into the night in the hope that this would be the magical blade that reflected and penetrated to the Soul of that ultimate Truth, the Essence of the One on which he meditated as he worked. So far he had failed miserably, and his blades, while more beautiful, were not as strong and practical as his father's had been, and did not sell as well. And the villagers did not understand him, and so mistrusted him. But he did not care; he expected very little of them.

There had been one time he had felt himself approach his goal of capturing the essence of the One in a blade, fusing finite matter and infinite spirit. The furnace seemed to glow with a more than earthly fire, the very Flame Imperishable, and his heart exalted as he beat the white-hot metal in which the spirit of Truth, the Logos of the World, seemed to shimmer with unlimited power.

But it had almost ended in disaster, when he hammered the over-tempered steel too eagerly, and it shattered like a tree struck by lightning. Trembling, he had thrown the deadly fragments into a dark corner of the smithy, thinking to study them later, since (he felt) he had come so close with that blade. But first fear, then his youthful impatience to go forward rather than back, had kept him from returning to it.

Many days he would work on deep into the night, following his latest idea. Then he would walk home under the stars, dog-tired, disappointed, looking up at the glittering firmament and wondering how to do better the next day. Rosa's ducks would quack loudly as he approached the darkened cottage, and she would wake up and complain. Then he would try to talk to her about what he was doing, about his hope of making a Sword of Power, but she seemed only interested in sleep. So he would light a candle and read from the ancient book his father had left him, which spoke of the magic of the earth and of the various metals and their alloys, and the four elements which could be woven into weapons, which are made from ores buried in the dark earth, glowing in fire, hissing in water and singing through air to hit their destined mark. Rosa would groan and turn away from the candlelight, but he would read on until his eyes closed of their own accord.

Then he would blow out the candle and think how frustrated he was in his high ambitions by his wife. She was (he thought, and often told her when they argued at night) just a stubbornly simple-minded gardener who did not seem to care about higher things. Even in the day-time when he tried to speak of some sparkling new idea as she gardened, she would not stop to listen, but said, 'I find truth in the soil of our garden and the flowers and vegetables, my love, not in some book. And our hope for peace must be in our children, not swords, whether magical or not. For your swords can only hack and destroy, but our children may be wiser than us, and help to heal our world.' But so far she had not been able to have a child.

One day at dawn Calibur left his wife planting out cabbages in the dew-laden garden while he went to the market in a nearby town, desperate to sell his stockpile of experimental swords, wrapped carefully in rags. There sat a stranger, peddling icons of the saints and wisdom books of various kinds. Calibur was in a hurry to set up his stall — he had to sell some of his stock or there would be no money to eat, let alone make new and better swords — but he stole a moment to look at the man's display. And in that moment one book gleamed in the early sun, as its leather cover was richly illuminated in gold leaf. Its embellished title dazzled his eyes and made his heart leap:

The Sword of Truth

By a Disciple of the Same

He was irresistibly drawn to it, in spite of his poverty.

'I must have it,' his mind said to his heart, and his hand involuntarily moved to pick it up. 'You cannot afford to buy books!' he heard his wife's reproachful voice in his head. But never in his life had he wanted anything so much, not since the first day he reached out for the hilt of the toy sword his father made for him on his sixth birthday.

'So, Smithie, ye're drawn to that book, are ye?' said the rustic trader. Calibur pulled his hand back, but the trader went on, 'That book is one of a kind, it is. He who sold it to me, he's a seer. He says to me, "Don't you tell him, but the man who buys this book is destinated to be my disciple and a great follerer of Truth." Don't ye tell him I told you that, will ye?'

'And where does this "seer" live?' smiled Calibur, knowing he was being drawn into the trader's game, but unable to hide his interest or suppress his excitement.

'Up there in the mountains.' The trader pointed to the looming mist-shrouded mountains behind the village. Calibur did not know of anyone who lived in such an inhospitable wilderness, for he did not go to the tavern so had heard none of the stories told by the pilgrims who passed over the mountains. The trader saw his disbelief, and said, 'I swear, there's a hermitage up there, and a seer and all.' Calibur shook his head in disbelief and turned to go, but the man added:

'He also says, "Tell 'im to read what's written on the first page."' The trader carefully held the book open so Calibur could read it. Under the exquisitely illuminated titlepiece was a note in a clear hand:

Dear seeker of Truth:

What is written in my Book is sharper than any sword, and will cut to the heart of life, to the truth of all things, and set you free from this world's cares. With this book, if you dare to read it, you will begin to forge the ultimate weapon you have sought in vain in the valleys of the world: an enlightened mind. Then, you may seek me in the mountains, and I will teach you further.

'He reads my mind, about the perfect Sword! Fate has sent him to teach me how to forge it!' thought Calibur, his heart beating fast. He wanted to believe in such a miracle as this. But still he hesitated. He looked distractedly at the other items on the rough hessian of the trader's trestle.

Suddenly his eye was caught and held by a beautiful apparition. It was an icon of a holy woman, painted on a small piece of smooth wood. In her hands she held a glowing orb of white light. He stared at the picture, dazed. Slyly, the trader handed him the icon. 'She's beautiful, ain't she? I'll throw 'er in too, if ye buy the book.' He smiled, showing crooked teeth. Calibur had never seen a face as ugly as the trader's, or as lovely as that of the woman in the icon. She was, he felt, the image of his perfect woman, pure and ethereal, an angelic companion to guide him to his destiny, which shone before him like the glowing treasure she held in her hands. His heart ached, as he gazed at her through a haze of lonely tears. He wanted to take her away from the trader, whatever the cost, away from the coarse clamour of the marketplace.

'How much is the book?' he asked, blinking away the tears. The woman's face seemed to glow, and her eyes reached into the depths of his soul, whispering to him of the new and higher path he was soon to take. He felt the wheel of his fate turning now, opening up a new world, and he felt intense desire for her beauty, and also for the book's truth. Why could Rosa not glow with spiritual beauty like this woman?

'If only Rosa could sparkle with the beauty of ideas as this woman undoubtedly does!' his heart cried. He recalled the joyful lightness he had once felt at the brink of a precipice alone in the mountains at sunrise. It was like that now; full of yearning and, no less, of danger. But this yearning was better: it had a definite object. 'This is the beginning of my true life!' he thought.

'What have ye got?' said the trader, reeling him in like a ravenous trout in a mountain stream.

Calibur brought a sword and planted it upright at the man's feet. But it was not enough. 'This is a boy's sword, not strong enough for a warrior,' said the trader, weighing it in his hand and bending the blade. Then he spat. Calibur fumed at the man's crudeness, but knew he was right. He planted another and another, in increasing anger, until all he had left was the best sword he had ever made (apart from the one which shattered), by far the best, a great sword, which he had polished and honed only the night before, bending lovingly over it by candlelight while Rosa slept, rubbing it with rouge-impregnated leather until he could see his face in it. He had even named the sword Prometheus, after the Greek god who had brought fire to mankind.

'Hand it over, then.' The trader beckoned insolently, eyeing it greedily, and Calibur felt an unholy rage, and imagined baptising the sword in the man's blood. But he was not a man of violence, and he wanted that book more than ever, now that he had laid out so much already to procure it. Slowly he raised the sword and let it go. Its point stabbed deep into the ground at the trader's feet.

He had nothing more to offer. Trembling, he spread

his arms questioningly. The trader was surrounded by

Calibur's swords.

'And where's the sheaths? What'll I do with twelve swords and no sheaths?' he asked.

'I do not make the scabbards,' said Calibur, barely containing his wrath. The trader stared at the row of swords and frowned.

'Still, it be the sign the old man told me,' he muttered. '"A dozen ordinary swords, this book be worth to the buyer!" is what he told me!' So the trader handed over the book and took the twelve ordinary swords.

So Calibur returned home hungry and empty-handed except for the Book of the spiritual quest (he hid the icon from Rosa, knowing she would be madly jealous). As he had anticipated, even his buying of the book upset her. 'It is bad enough that you make instruments of slaughter,' she cried, 'and now you throw them away for a book! What will we eat?'

'You should have planted more vegetables instead of all those roses!' said Calibur.

'You should have made me a plough and helped me till the soil, and made me that fox-proof duck run, and helped with the compost heap!'

'Ploughs! Duck-runs! Compost! Pah! Women's work! This book you esteem so lightly speaks of divine truths, woman! With its help I will unriddle the mystery of the whole World, and my own destiny. Then I will forge the most powerful sword of all, the Sword of Truth, one that will cut down the enemies of Truth and found a glorious kingdom such as the world has never seen!'

'You're going mad!' cried Rosa.

'God save us from your kind of sanity!' yelled Calibur. 'It would see us all raising ducks and tending cabbages until the barbarians come and bury us in our own compost heaps!'

But Rosa wept, and wondered where her husband's folly would end. 'It is because I could not bear him a son,' she thought bitterly. Aloud she said,

'I am sick to death of your evil swords and your meaningless dreams! I'm off to water the cabbages,' and she ran off into the garden, slamming the door.

'Damn your cabbages!' shouted Calibur after her. Then he stormed off to the forge, and bolted the door. He opened the Book with shaking hands, and read:

Your first duty is to purify yourself, of anger, lust and all passions, to seek the One and find Him in pure, will-less contemplation.

Your second is to receive from Him the knowledge of your True Destiny, and follow it, for only thus does the kingdom of Heaven come to Earth, to free you from the Earth.

'I want to do this, with all my heart!' said Calibur aloud. And he saw a bright image of the perfect Sword, the Sword of Truth, running into its mould, and himself forging it in showers of sparks on the smooth forge-stone, and tempering it in the ice-cold springwater, the clouds of steam rising into a perfect blue sky. And in the vision he saw a woman with him, and he rejoiced. 'It is the woman in the Icon!' a voice whispered in

his heart.

That day and the next, Calibur let his forge grow cold while he read the Book alone in the locked smithy, and he was inflamed as never before with the desire for truth, knowledge of the One, and spiritual glory.

On the first night he slept alone by the cold forge. And he woke in the night, and saw a light at the end of the bed, and it was the Perfect Woman in the icon who held the orb, floating in a sea of luminous night. He thought, 'The orb is her own bright soul!' and he felt his heart would break with joyful recognition and love, and his soul cried out to hers, 'Where have you been all my life?' And as he wept and communed with her soul, the vision slowly passed, and he thought, 'Now I know she will lead me to my Destiny. Or is she herself my destiny? Yet I am married to Rosa. My heart will be torn in two!' But he knew in truth his heart had already gone to the woman in the icon. 'For with her lies my True Destiny, and even before I was born to this life, I knew her. For her soul glows, as Rosa's never will,' he whispered in the darkness.

On the second night he dreamed that the woman of the icon held an open book, and in the book was a great mountain, and pilgrims like ants wound up its slopes towards a glowing vision of a golden sword hanging in the air by the topmost peak. And she told him that he must go with them, up into the mountains which the trader had pointed out, and there he would find his Destiny.

In the morning of the third day after he had sold his swords and bought the Book, he felt sure that he was on the verge of enlightenment, and no longer needed the softness of a woman, or the hope of a son. So he left his wife and his father's forge, and set off to find the One Truth, and his own destiny, in the lost hermitage in the mountains where the writer of the book lived.

Before he left, Rosa gave him provisions, and rosehips from the roses in the garden. 'These keep the colds of winter at bay,' she told him. 'Go now, since you must, and may you find what you are looking for, and one day return to me!' He thanked her for the provisions, but mocked her faith in the rosehips. Then, his eyes bright with an other-worldly hope, he said good-bye. 'Rosa, I do not mean to return,' he said. 'My path and my true Destiny lie far away, beyond the mountains.' And he told her about the icon that had made him think of a different kind of woman altogether, a magical one who would join him in his quest, and enable him to find his Destiny.

She looked at him, tears welling up from deep inside, long hidden. 'I knew this day would come! I knew you were not content with me, a "simple gardener", and I feared that one day you would leave me. But I thought, if I bore you a child...'

'Perhaps it is destiny, then, that we could not have children. But I know you will be happier with someone else. And I have rented out the smithy to the saddler, so you will not go hungry,' said Calibur, and his heart was heavy, knowing her pain. But even as he spoke, his great hope drew him on. Rosa wept bitterly as he set off, and it was as if a sword had pierced her heart.

'I will wait for you nevertheless,' she whispered at last, and went back to the garden.

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2

The Cave of the Goddess

Truth-obsessed, drunk with a new feeling of complete freedom from the lower world, climbing higher and higher in the sunlight, Calibur made for the peaks of the transcendent mountains.

But he did not notice the weather closing in. Thick clouds were sweeping down the mountainside, and it became bitterly cold and dark. The path vanished in the gloom, and soon he knew he was lost. A strange shape loomed up before him, and he stopped, afraid that it was a bear or some other wild creature of the mountains. He waited for its attack, frozen to the spot. He thought of the bitter irony that he, a sword-smith, had no sword to defend himself. But the shape did not attack, or even move. He stepped closer. It was only an upright stone. He sighed with relief, but then he noticed the grim words inscribed on the stone:

IN MEMORIAM

Brushing a drift of snow from the lower part, he read:

Here lieth Boghild,

a pilgrim

beloved of Anne

until the World's End.

He felt a chill of fear in his heart, and a lump in his throat. 'Is it a warning?' he caught himself thinking. But he stumbled on past the grim sentinel, knowing he would freeze to death if he stopped, and unable in his heart to turn back.

He was growing weaker. He knew he did not have long. But no matter which way he looked, his eyes stinging in the freezing wind, he could not see any sign of the hermitage, or find a way down. So he kept climbing up by lightning-blasted ledges into the blinding blizzard, and by great good luck he finally came to a high mountain pass. Near the very top, as he stood exhausted, wondering if he would die on his feet, he saw an overhang in the rock where the snow swirled and piled high. Stumbling blindly through the icy drift, he felt a recess in the overhang. It was not quite a cave, but the wind was much less and hardly any snow had fallen there. He had brought a bundle of woollen blankets and gloves, and a fur hat, and now he wrapped himself up in them all. Curling up in the recess beneath the overhang, he shivered, hugging his frozen hands, until he felt some warmth and life returning to his limbs. 'I am free at last!' he thought as he drifted off to sleep. 'Tomorrow I will find the Writer of the Book, or die in the attempt.'

But the next morning it was fine, and the view from the recess was so magnificent he felt he could look out and glimpse the Infinite. Also, looking about the overhang, he found to his amazement that it led into a proper cave, unseen by him in the night. He shivered at the thought. 'What if some wild beast lives inside?' he wondered. 'Yet, in there I could be almost cosy, out of reach of the cursed wind.' So, after eating some of the dried fruit from his pack, he cautiously felt his way inside.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw an alcove with the remains of a bed of heather. 'Perhaps it was once used by some hermit; perhaps even the Writer himself' he thought. 'It is musty, but it looks warm and dry enough.' Suddenly there was a loud rustling in the bed. He backed away in fear. But when he saw a little grey tail disappearing into the heather, he breathed again. It was only a rat. 'Cursed animal,' he muttered, recovering from the fright.

Exploring further in, he found a well brimming with crystal-clear water. He drank from it thankfully. Then, finding a stick, he stirred up the bed with it and chased the rat out of the cave. And looking up at the boundless blue sky, he marvelled at this new provision from the One.

So Calibur decided to stay at the cave awhile to read and meditate before setting out again to find the Writer of the Book. He had a good store of dried duck-meat and fruits from Rosa's garden, apricots and raisins and nuts (and the rosehips), and there was dry wood in the ancient straggly firs that clung to the mountainsides.

On the following day Calibur looked for the hermitage, but found no sign of it, so returned to the cave. He drank from the well, and propped the icon of the Perfect Woman against the rock in the alcove. 'I will stay here until my food runs out, and live as an ascetic hermit, and read and practise the Book myself without the help of the Writer,' he said to the icon, and he became elated at the thought. 'My friends will be the truths in the Book, and the woman in the icon, and the fresh winds and sunlight.' And he laughed aloud until the mountains echoed. He thought of Rosa. 'She would think I was truly mad now,' he muttered to the icon. 'But we know better, don't we? Soon I will be enlightened, and the truth of all things will be laid bare to me. Then you and I and The One will have the last laugh. How we will laugh!' And he ate some dried fruits and nuts, and threw the seeds down the mountainside. He began to wonder how he would fare when the dried food ran out, but answered himself: 'Now I am a holy man, the One will provide; has He not already provided a cave and a bed, and a well?'

Calibur did not yet know it, but the cave was an ancient shrine to the Goddess of the Mountain, Queen of Heaven, source of the snow-fed torrents that flowed down to the valleys; and pilgrims passing over her would leave offerings of milk and honey and bread and red wine. Calibur hid deep in the cave the first time he saw someone coming up the pass, fearing that they were bandits. When he came out it was dark, and in the moonlight he saw the food and drink, and was amazed, and raising his eyes to the night sky, gave thanks to the One for His provision.

But the truths of the Book still seemed to be veiled from him. The days rolled on, each sunrise and sunset a celebration, he felt, but of what or whom, and to what ultimate end, he still could not grasp. The snow on the mountains grew icier as winter began to bite, and the pilgrims grew fewer and the gifts of food inadequate to feed him. Also he had run out of rosehips, which (as Rosa had said) kept the colds at bay, and he caught a bad cold. Then the One seemed to be in hiding, while the icon of the woman in the Book haunted and tormented him with longing for a real woman and her warm comforting love.

And sometimes the gales would blow outside the cave for days and nights on end, until one night he began to hear the voices of demons in the howling of the wind, as he covered his ears and tried to sleep. 'Is there no getting away from you, you restless demonic wind?' he cried at last. And he fell into an uneasy sleep, and the wind came to him, and stood over him and said, mockingly, 'I am Life, and you are part of me. Why do you try to run from yourself?' But Calibur could not embrace the restless energy that is life, and though he prayed for the apparition to go, all night it chased him in his dreams.

The wind died down in the night, and the next morning Calibur awoke to a bright clear day. He set to his meditations as usual, but with more than the usual hope of gaining some insight. Then, at mid-morning, light-headed with hunger and lack of sleep, in a blinding flash he suddenly saw the central truth of the Book. 'Aha!' he cried, 'So that is what the old man was trying to say in so many words! That the reality of the One is a necessary truth that could not be otherwise, just like the eternal truths of geometry which my father proved to me, scratching lines in the ephemeral sand! Or like the truths of arithmetic, that any trader knows, that one and one is always two, never three.

'Of course the concept of the One is unlike the concept of a tree or a rock or even of the whole World! I can imagine these things not existing, but the One, the sum of all truths...! My mind can no more deny its reality than say that the laws of geometry or arithmetic are unreal. Now I perceive the One as the eternal matrix of all ephemeral being, the shifting sands and the very mountains which in time will be ground by glaciers into sand. Yet the One is immutable. And so too is my soul which perceives this truth.'

And in that moment he knew he did not need the Book any more, or any of the propositions that it eked out from this central truth. It all seemed too clear for words. So he threw the Book down the mountainside, and laughed until he cried. Then he lay down in the cave and slept like a baby.

When he awoke it was late afternoon, and the snowy peaks outside were golden in the sun, and to his horror he found that he had forgotten all the later propositions of the Book. Only the necessary existence of the One lingered in his memory like a fading coal taken from the fire. He went out and looked in vain for the Book on the sheer mountainside. He regretted his rash deed and the irrevocable loss of the Book. 'What do I know without the Book?' he thought, and he felt giddy, and everything about him seemed strange and inscrutable, and looking within all he could see was the memory of a knowing that was gone, like the pale traces of a glorious sunset.

At last he decided to humbly seek shelter and help in the hermitage — if he could find it. 'Perhaps the Writer will teach me the Truth so clearly I will never forget it,' he thought. But still he kept the icon of the Perfect Woman next to his heart.

He climbed higher and higher into the mountains, and finally when all hope had left him and the thin air had muddled his thinking, he found the entrance to the hermitage, almost covered in a great snowdrift. Delirious from hunger and exhaustion and the cold, he thought he was returning home after a winter's day at the smithy, and called out, 'Rosa, I'm home! Let me in!' and knocked feebly on the thick slab of oak that served as a door. Then he collapsed unconscious into the snowdrift and dreamed he was coming into the cottage, and Rosa was greeting him warmly, while in reality his limbs began to freeze and the deadly cold crept towards his heart.

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3

The Rat and the Rose

But the hermits had heard his call. They took him in and rubbed his limbs, wrapped him in blankets and revived him with hot soup, and the next day he was accepted as a novice. The Writer of the Book, they said, did indeed live among them. However, he had taken a vow of strict seclusion, and could not meet him. So Calibur passed the winter in the hermitage, in humble toil and meditations, practicing with the other hermits a life of simplicity and renunciation, sharpening their one precious iron axe, hewing their firewood and drawing water from their well.

He soon learned that the brothers did not approve of images of the sacred, or of any beauty save that of the mind and spirit. For they were Platonists. So, since he could not bring himself to destroy it, he kept his icon of the Perfect Woman hidden.

The One, he now perceived, is the Primeval Absolute, independent of space and time, just as the truths of geometry and arithmetic, of logic and ethics are, and he often rejoiced and marvelled at the ineffable mystery of that Truth, compared to which all Worlds are but straw and stubble. And he marvelled at the human mind which can apprehend it.

Yet his mental ecstasies would pass, all too soon, like a wave on the sea, and he would be dejected and fall to wondering why the World, in its suffering and imperfection, exists at all. And every now and then, though it was forbidden by the hermits to have any images of the divine, let alone of a woman, Calibur would take out the icon of the Perfect Woman, and wonder, and ask her, 'Why, why, does anything but God exist? What possible use can He have for all these imperfect beings, whose highest visions are but fleeting sparks in a dark cave, when He is the noon-day sun, That than which nothing greater can be thought; the infinite Sum of all perfections, while we (as the brothers rightly say) are like wretched blind rats fighting over scraps in a sewer?' And her smile seemed to gently mock his metaphors, as if holding a secret far beyond their reach.

But Calibur began to guess at it, and doubt the wisdom of the brothers.

Every once in a while, a group of pilgrims would pass that way on their way to Avebury, and the hermits would bless them and in return receive their offerings of food and wine. The pilgrims would give to them in the name of the Goddess, believing them to be holy men devoted to Her; otherwise why would anyone live up there on her snowy heights? And the hermits would accept the food and wine as from the One God above, and Calibur began to have his doubts about who was closer to the truth: the simple pilgrims who accepted Life as from the divine Mother of all; or the Platonic hermits who despised them, and life itself, and laid claim to the transcendent realm as the only fit home for the soul. He began to see them as those who look a gift horse in the mouth, or complain that water is too wet, or grass too green.

After one such visit, when the hermits were in high spirits from the wine the pilgrims had brought (and perhaps also from the mouldy rye-bread they were eating), Calibur ventured to voice his doubts about their attitude to Life, and what they said the about the One being irrevocably divorced from the World, and there was a loud disputation, until they came to agreement, upon which they all turned to him and accused him of blasphemy. He tried to counter by repeating some of the things he remembered Rosa had said, about the truth of the world being found within a single flower, and the meaning of life in the smile of a baby.

But they were silenced by the irritable knocking of the Writer's staff on the floor of his locked cell above. And retreating to the silence of his own cell, Calibur meditated urgently on the question of the true nature of the One and Its relationship with the World, and had thoughts of returning to Rosa.

But in the morning he settled back into the normal routine of privation and prayers. And so the days passed, until the next time they were all drinking the wine offerings from the pilgrims (except for the old Writer, who remained in rigorous seclusion), and entering into spirited disputation. This time Calibur had his thoughts clearer. He stood up and said, 'My brothers, while it is undisputed that there is "That than which nothing greater can be thought", and It has necessarily all positive attributes, including existence (though not on our merely contingent, ephemeral, material level); nevertheless, who is to say what view or image of that Being has the most truth; that which would paint It as a stern and distant Father, or that which portrays it as a loving Mother, as present to us as the air we breathe, flesh of our flesh, and bone of our bone, in Whom we live and move and have our being? My brothers, if the latter is true, why have we left our mothers and our fathers and our friends and beloveds, to come to this lonely place? For even here, behold! We still have our bodies, which we cannot deny while we live, chastise them as we may. And behold the mountains and the life-giving waters, which issue forth from this place and flow down into the valleys and give life to fish and fowl and crops, teeming and sensuous!' But the hermits grumbled and replied,

'For shame, little brother, you have let the wine inflame you with wild lustful follies and blasphemies, instead of using it to warm your enthusiasm for the Truth!'

'But the Truth must encompass this World and permeate it with meaning, or what is this existence for?'

'It is a testing-ground, a vale of suffering and temptation, to separate the sheep who will follow the shepherd of heavenly Truth out of the valley of worldly lusts into the mountains of snowy purity and the eternal Forms, from the blind goats who prefer bondage to the material world and its idolatrous images,' said Faunus, the oldest hermit, whose long hollow-cheeked face and drunken eyes (thought Calibur) did indeed resemble a goat's. He restrained a laugh, and ventured to reply:

'Yet, venerable father, if from the earth an artist may fashion a heavenly form, and in it the heavenly and the earthly meet and are fused, so that all who look on it are enlightened, how can that be wrong? What if the Earth too is sacred? And what if Heaven and Earth wish to be married? Will you refuse then to come to the wedding?'

'Blashphemy!' slurred the old hermit. 'Ignore brother Calibur!' said the others, 'He is a drunken and unteachable novice,' and they all turned their backs on him, and returned to their disputations about the best form of meditation and bodily purifications in order to more fully apprehend the One and defeat the temptations of the body.

Ashamed and angry, Calibur went to the Room of the Abyss, which was built out over the outermost crag on which the hermitage was built. He looked out the window at the airy gulf above the sheer mountainside on which the hermitage was perched, and the full moon hanging over the cloud-covered distant valleys like a wheel of blue-veined cheese rising from a sea of milk.

As he sipped the last of his red wine, far down beneath the cloud he thought he could hear the faint sound of waterfalls fed by the thawing snow, or was it just the wind in the firs? He cupped his ears, trying to block out the sound of the other hermits still disputing in the next room. He imagined he heard, further down still, the bleating of lambs and their mothers answering. He yearned to go down to that land of milk and honey and dance with Rosa in the moonlight and make love with her in the scented darkness, and in the morning watch the lambs playing in the fields, and admire his wife's cabbages and ducklings, and see the dew on the roses sparkle in the sun.

But in the morning Calibur had a terrible hangover. He cursed his rebellious flesh with its wayward desires, submitted willingly to the disciplines Faunus laid upon him, and tried to forget the mundane world he had left far behind.

Yet, try as he might, he could not stop the questions. And there came another occasion, when the brothers were discussing whether there is an Ideal form for all things, even mud or dust. And Faunus said 'No, it cannot be that such foul excrescences of the lower can be modelled on the Ideal Forms which reside above with the One. Only such things as the five Platonic Solids, and the virtues, can have Ideal Forms.'

'But venerable master,' burst out Calibur, though he was on silence for a previous indiscretion, 'In the divine wisdom which permeates all life, the mud brings forth the beautiful lotus, and the dust when watered yields the soil which nurtures the wheat, without which our bodies would die, and the minds that contemplate the eternal Ideals would perish with them.' The brothers remained silent, and encouraged, Calibur went on, 'Even excrement when mixed with plant matter, feeds the worms and produces fine dark compost in which good women grow cabbages and carrots and apples, and all good things.' He was thinking of Rosa now, and her garden, and wishing he could walk with her in it once more.

'Blasphemy!' said Faunus, and Calibur apologised for referring to excrement, and fell silent. But he kept thinking about gardens and life, and the divine goodness of it, though admittedly imperfect, unlike the Platonic Solids.

Meanwhile, back at his old cave, the Book which he had thrown away had landed in a crevice half-way down the mountain-side, where the rat, having lost its home to Calibur, had nevertheless lived well off the rubbish Calibur threw down. The rat pulled the Book in and chewed it up to line its nest.

Then, being old, it died, and its remains and the remains of the book rotted away together.

One day in early spring when the snow was still on the ground, from the rich soil in the rat's crevice a rose seed began to sprout. The little plant prospered, but, feeling its life was precarious, it put all its energy into a single lovely bloom.

On the day the rose was fully opened, Calibur happened to pass his old cave on an errand to cut firewood for the hermitage. He put his load down and stretched. Looking down he saw the little rose, glowing red in the pure white snow, and marvelled at it. He remembered Rosa and his heart was pierced as by a sword, and suddenly he remembered that he was still a man, and that he still loved his wife and desired her. 'I can even forgive her for saying she was sick of my swords and my dreams,' he thought. And his feelings began to thaw like a mountain stream in spring-time, and he rejoiced.

Then this truth dawned on him: that in all the days of his quest he had never truly been lost; the truth of Life was there beneath his very feet as in vain he sought to possess the transcendent One on the bare mountaintop. And he wept for his wife, who could have told him that. 'So, this is the truth the pilgrims held in their hearts when they left their simple offerings to the goddess of the cave!' he thought. 'How I wish I had talked to them!'

Seized with the desire to show his gratitude to Life and the Goddess, he climbed down the dangerous slope and picked the single rose. He bore it carefully up into the cave, and laid it in a little hollow on the stone altar at the entrance, and the air was filled with its fragrance. Taking water from the spring, he filled the hollow so that the rose floated in it. Then he had a long drink of the icy rose-scented water, and looked around, and the mountains seemed to enfold him, and for a moment Life was no riddle, or if it was, he and every other living thing, and every rock and the clear air and the blue sky and the water of the well and the rose floating in it, were all the answer he needed.

He brought his load of firewood back to the hermitage, put it down and said good bye to the hermits. 'Thank you for all your help and succour, my brothers!' he said. With you I have found God and Truth on the mountain-top; now I go back down to find the World and Life,' And they envied the joy in his smile, and his faith in Life and a living destiny. Though they tried to smile back brightly, he saw their crooked mouths and was reminded of the ugliness of the Trader. Still, grateful for all they had done for him, he embraced them. Their hearts were warmed, and they brushed away their tears, and wished him Godspeed. Then Calibur left the hermits and came down from the mountains to find Rosa and beg her forgiveness.

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4

The Valley of the Perfect Woman

But a mist rose out of the valleys, and he lost his way in the failing light, and fell down a ravine, hitting his head on the rocks. That night he slept on the rocks with a stone for a pillow, and the cold mist all about him. Yet his heart was still light: he was returning home.

And in the morning the sun melted the mist and warmed his aching bones, and he found a way out of the ravine.

He found himself in a strange upland full of crevasses with no familiar landmarks to guide him. For three days and nights he wandered in the harsh wilderness, until his clothes were tattered, his feet were cut by the sharp rocks, and he felt that he was dying of thirst. Now the whole world seemed hard and cold, and the very idea of the One or the Goddess seemed a mockery of his torment, and he cursed his life, and lay down

to die.

But on the third night it rained, and a little water pooled in the hollows of a rock by his head, and he drank it. Then he lay back and looked up at the stars, formerly so cold and distant, and they were blazing with frosty fire in a velvety dome which wrapped over the world like a cloak. Suddenly he heard the words, 'The starry void is not barren; it is the Womb of Worlds.' He did not know where he had heard the words before, but he felt sure that they were true, and he wept for joy at the wonder and mystery of Life, and fell asleep.

And at dawn, waking with new hope, he rose up and painfully picked his way between the fissured rocks until at noon he stumbled into a cleft in the rock and slipping, slithered on his back into darkness. But his fall was soon broken by soft soil and drifted leaves. Shakily he got back on his feet. Before him was a little hidden valley between sheer cliffs. As in a dream he saw there was a beautiful garden in the valley, and in the garden was a beautiful woman, sowing seed. He stood mesmerised, staring at her. She seemed to him in that moment the living image of the Perfect Woman in the icon, which he still carried next to his heart.

She stopped working, and looked up at Calibur. He walked down to her, but he could not speak; his mouth was dry with thirst. She gave him some water from her flask, and he drank, and thanked her fervently. 'You look starved too!' she said. Then she handed him a spade, saying, 'If I feed you now, you must promise to use this spade every day, and dig my garden and make it bigger, or we will both starve.'

Calibur nodded and reached for the spade. He looked into her eyes, and she smiled, a perfect, transcendent smile. Then his head went light and his sight failed, and letting go of the spade he fell to the ground at her feet as one dead.

The Perfect Woman took him into her hut and nursed him back to health. It was spring, and soon his convalescence became a happy dream, and he almost forgot Rosa. He found it pure delight to dig the Perfect Woman's garden for her and help her plant her rye and her carrots and cabbages. 'I never knew cabbages were so beautiful,' he said to her, and she smiled, and her loving presence seemed to enfold the valley and every living thing in it, just as the night sky had seemed to enfold the world the night before he found her.

By night they would watch the stars, the great cloak of the Goddess, or sit by the fire and talk quietly of the mysteries of Life upon the earth, and of their different destinies. Once, he brought up the subject of his great hope of old, that he would one day forge a great Sword of purity and redemption, a Sword of Truth which fused Spirit and Matter, and she did not laugh or scold, but said, 'When the time comes, perhaps within the magic web of the Goddess's wisdom you may be empowered to create this Sword of Truth. But before you could forge such a sword, you must learn the meaning of the mystic Rose and the Web of Life. And I think only in the land beyond the setting sun would you find the materials to make it.'

'Where is that?' asked Calibur.

'In Avalon,' she replied. 'For it must have a great emerald in the hilt, and the blade, perhaps, must be of a metal not found in this world. To be a Sword of Peace as well as Truth, it must have a sheath as fine as it, to balance it and keep the balance of all Life. And who would be worthy to wield it? Would you?' And he listened to her as he had not listened to his wife, because she believed in his dream of the Sword, and because he had seen her face as the angelic Goddess in the icon.

One night he showed her the icon, and told her his story, how he fell in love with the ideal woman he saw portrayed there, and how he had been moved with a great desire to find her. 'For I knew that only with her could I fulfil my true destiny. For she would be my muse, and I hers.' She listened to him speak with shining eyes, and nodded her head. She understood! Filled with hope, he went on to tell her of his dream, where her soul appeared to him beyond the veil, where kindred souls speak directly to each other. 'And I vowed then to serve her always with undying love. And now, seeing you, I feel that the glowing soul I saw is yours, and I love you with undying love, and will serve you always, even to the end of the Age. And together we will forge the great Sword of Truth!'

She frowned, as if unsure how to answer, and Calibur's heart sank like a stone. Then she replied, 'Dear brother, you have seen the image of the Goddess in me; and that is good. But now you must see her in your own wife — which will be even better.' And though Calibur found that hard, no, impossible, to believe in his heart, he tried to accept her words even as his soul sank into darkness. Now he had no enthusiasm for the vision that had burned so brightly a moment before, of forging the perfect Sword of Truth.

'How can I go back to someone I left and pretend to love her, and forget you, and never have you?' he asked at last, his voice thick with grief, his cheeks burning with shame at her rejection.

'If you learn to love her, you will have the goddess. And if you have the goddess, in her you will have all women. I am no different, in essence, from your wife — no, it is true! I am just another facet of Her, one that your heart seeks, because it is the feminine half of your own soul, which you long for and miss.

'For I am one in whose face men see that which they have lost within their own souls, and they are smitten, and desire to have me so that they can possess it again. But it is not in me; I am, in myself, not what they seek. I am a bright magic mirror for them; a muse, who helps them have faith in themselves; helps them believe what they need to believe in order to become whole and so fulfil their destinies. In my mirror they may read and remember the life they came into the world to live.'

'What did you do before you came to this lonely valley?' asked Calibur, to give himself time to recover from her reply, that he must leave her. His ears were still stinging from her words as from the lashes of a whip, kindly spoken though

they were.

'I was a courtesan in the great city of Londinium, and danced the dance of the Seven Veils for men — and money.'

'But, I thought you said you were a muse.' He tried not to show his shock — and jealousy — at the thought of her being with other men.

'It is the same thing, just on another level. And one day I grew tired of men who only listened to my words of inspiration until they felt good, then wanted only to take my body — as if in having my body they could possess that which they saw in my magic mirror. I could not give them what they sought: it is only found within. But men are lazy; they would rather pick flowers than learn how to grow them.'

'So, you left?'

'One day a rich merchant, who was besotted with me, said that I must become his wife or he would have me killed. I did not love him, though I was drawn to his power, knowing that he could give me everything I would ever need — except for one thing.'

'What was that?'

'He could never give me my own true Destiny. I would always be just his possession, always holding the mirror up to his greatness. And I knew I would hate him for that in the end. But I was tempted, for I did not want to end up starving in the streets — or dead.'

'So, what did you do?'

'I ran away. I left it all behind, the fame, the adulation, the security of gold and silver, and fled into the wilderness, and one day I found this hidden valley.

'And here, though it seems I am fated to live alone, I am happy, because I am close to the Goddess, and in Her time I know I will fulfil my true Destiny, and live the life that is already written in my soul, the life I came into the world to live.'

'What will that be, do you think? Surely not just tending this garden!'

'No, I have caught glimpses... your coming has reminded me of something. You speak of this Sword, and recognition leaps within me. One day our paths will cross again, I think. But for now: your life is bound up with your wife's, so you must go to her, and learn to do reverence to her as you do reverence to me. Then you will see her soul glow, and in her you will find that you also have the Goddess; and in the Goddess you have all women; even me. And likewise, in you she will have all men.

'But only with your wife will you find your True Destiny: only with her will you be able to forge the Sword you dream of.'

Now Calibur was downcast, and his heart was like stone inside him, and he did not hear her last words, or care about the Sword of Truth any more. And, saying he was tired, he laid the icon at her feet, went out into the night and wept among the roses which he had planted for her.

The next day she blessed him and told him, 'Today you must set off to find your own village — and Rosa.' His heart was heavy within him and the sun appeared dark to his eyes, for though he knew she loved him in the Goddess and he loved her, and they would always be friends if ever they met again, he still wished to be with her always.

She gave him back the icon, and said, 'The Goddess is permissive, and knew your need for it. But She is also a good housekeeper, and nothing is forgotten; everything must be accounted for and put back in its place. So you must return, and seek your earthly love, while there is breath in your body.

'One day, too, She may call you to honour your vow to serve me in some way. Meanwhile, remember me, and never forget: I believe in your true Destiny. I believe it concerns me also. That is why I send you away now — to find your destiny, with Rosa.'

'If I do find my true Destiny where you are sending me, I will thank you for the rest of my days,' said Calibur. 'But that does not lighten my grief now.' And so they parted.

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5

Rosa's Ruin

The valley of the Perfect Woman (whose name was Gwynneth) was on the far side of a great sweep of the mountains, and Calibur was footsore and homesick long before he saw the familiar folds of land opening before him and finally his home village, with his old smithy up a short path, and beyond it the path over gentle hills to the cottage and the gardens that Rosa had tended with such love. He looked down at his clothes, and was ashamed that they were ragged, and his beard and hair were matted.

But when he arrived at the cottage they had shared together in such bliss (as it now seemed to him) he had a terrible shock: nothing remained there but lines of fallen stones under rampant briars surrounded by unpruned trees.

He ran to the blackened ruin, and there on the remains of the chimney, he saw a cross chiselled into the stones and crudely painted in red. He cried aloud in anger and bewilderment, and wandered about the place, seeking some shred of the things he remembered that were in the cottage, or any further sign of what had happened. 'I had no idea how important this place was to me — and my beloved who lived here — even though I had forsaken them and gone far away,' he thought, bitterly.

At last, exhausted, he lay down against the ruined chimney and stared out at the view he once saw through his kitchen window. Suddenly he heard loud bleating and a flock of goats came running into the clearing that was once his cottage, and began eating the roses and tearing up the grass. He jumped up in anger, and as he looked about for a stick, a young man in green stepped over what remained of Calibur's front doorstep, leaned on his shepherd's crook and asked, 'What are you doing here?'

Calibur was not a man of violence, but all his frustration came to a head and he challenged the goatherd: 'Be off, you vagabond! This is my house!' But the goatherd only laughed, and said, 'Is that so?' Calibur ran at him. They wrestled, and as the sun went down the goatherd was at last overcome, and he told Calibur, 'I am persuaded! You are the owner of this house. No one else would fight so hard for a burnt-out patch of land and some old stones! Now, if you pay me, I will tell you what happened to the woman who lived here. What do you have that you can give me?'

'Only this,' said Calibur, letting go of the goatherd, and going to his pack, he took out the icon of the Perfect Woman.

'She is beautiful,' said the goatherd.

'I know; and perilous. For this face I left my wife, and was ruined. Yet, this face also saved me.'

'I will be careful then! Now I will tell you what I know. The woman of this house was reported to the church authorities as a witch. For — they said — she turns down all suitors and lives alone, and keeps a black cat, and gardens and grows herbs and mandrakes amidst the cabbages. And...'

Calibur interrupted, 'What do you mean, "church authorities"?'

'Do you not know? Missionaries came from far away, a place called Rome, and told the people of a God above heaven and earth, to whom all below is as dust and ashes. And they said, "If you believe in the new God you will be saved and rise up beyond the heavens when you die, but if you do not believe you will be damned to torments beneath the earth forever." And the people were afraid, since there had just been a pestilence, and many had died, and the crops had rotted in the fields.'

Calibur gnashed his teeth. 'This folly is worse than that of my brothers the hermits! Yet it leads on from it. Perhaps they will welcome the new teaching, and find many disciples!'

'Now do you wish to hear what happened to the woman who lived here?' said the goatherd impatiently.

'Yes,' said Calibur, but he was filled with foreboding.

'One night there was a terrible wind and hail, which passed through the whole village, and not one house or garden was left undamaged, and what was left of the crops was destroyed. But Rosa's garden was untouched. They came for her the next night, and set fire to her house. But she fled, and it is rumoured that she was last seen going west towards Land's End, and that she has passed over to the Isle of Avalon, which the priests of Rome call accursed and an abode of witches. But of course it is more likely that she fell over some cliff into the sea, and perished.'

'She was my wife,' replied Calibur in anguish.

'She may have been,' said the goatherd. 'But if she still lives, will she ever want to be again?' Then he gave Calibur some goat's milk and cheese, wished him luck, and disappeared into the twilight with his flock and the icon of the Perfect Woman.

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6

The Book of the Quintessence

When the goatherd had gone, Calibur felt more alone than ever before. He realised that he had always expected one day to return and tell Rosa all he had seen and done. For she had been the love of his youth, and his comfort after the death of his father and mother. She had listened to his dreams and hopes, and laughed and sang to him of children and a home to which his feet would hurry at night after his labours at the hot forge. She had been a home for his wandering mind, soothing water to quench and temper his fiery spirit.

Then, when his love for her had faded, there had been the icon of the Perfect Woman, and his heart's hope of finding his true Destiny with her. And for his mind's comfort he had had the Book, on which he had pinned such high hopes of enlightenment; then for company the Platonic brothers to help him forget that he was alone in the world.

But now the book was eaten by a rat, the icon was given to a goatherd, and the Perfect Woman had rejected him, sending him back to Rosa. And even she was gone, and their old home was a ruin. His aching heart now turned again to Rosa, remembering in her dark eyes the deep truths of the Earth. And the tears ran down his soot-blackened cheeks as he wept for her in the ruins of the cottage under the rampant briars.

When he looked up it was growing dark and the first stars were out. He shivered; it had grown very cold. He unrolled his tattered hermit's blanket and curled up in a pile of mouldy straw, the charred remains of the thatched roof. Exhausted, he was soon fast asleep.

In the night he tossed and turned, feeling something hard under his blanket. Groping through the straw, he found a small rectangular object. He sat up and looked at it in the starlight. It was slashed and charred, but he recognised it at once: it was the icon of the Lady of Avalon which Rosa's mother had given them on their wedding day, a talisman to bring the blessing of the Goddess to their union. Once she had brought it out and said, 'If we pray to the Lady, perhaps She will grant us a child.' He had snatched it from her hand, accusing her of being a foolish and superstitious woman, and thrown it out. But she had secretly retrieved it.

Now he looked at the broken image of the Lady through his tears, and her eyes looked into his heart, and he felt it confess to her, 'My life was always in your hands, and the One dwells also with You here in the valley, not just on the mountaintop.'

With a sudden joy he felt his divided heart become one. Often in the mountains, after meditating on the pure truth of the One in the Platonic realm, he had felt depressed when he came back down to Earth, 'this imperfect shadowland,' as the hermits called it. Now he felt those same shadows flow with the milk of love and the wisdom of life. 'Though You are as hard as the stars, You are also soft and forgiving as the breasts of a mother,' he murmured. 'You have forgiven me, and you will surely lead me to Rosa, and perhaps she too will forgive me.' He lay back, and gazing at the night sky he fell asleep again, still clutching the tattered icon of Avalon.

Towards morning, as the sky lightened in the east like a shell with delicate rosy hues, he dreamed that he saw the ferryman of Avalon, the magic faerie island in the far West beyond this world, which can be found only by those who are worthy. And in his dream the ferryman called to him from across the water, 'Seek for Rosa in Avalon, if you be a true man and worthy of her, and wish one day to fulfil your true Destiny.' And in his sleep Calibur vowed to become worthy of her, find Avalon and beg Rosa's forgiveness.

Then out of the water rose a sword, golden in the light of the sun sinking over Avalon. The emerald in its hilt sparkled like green fire. 'It is the Sword of Truth!' Calibur thought. But as he walked over the water to seize it, he began to sink and the waves covered his head.

He woke up, gasping for air, as the rays of the rising sun caught the ruined walls of the cottage and shone into his eyes. He looked at the ruins of his house, and remembered the bitter news of the night before with a heavy heart. Then his heart leaped within him as the memory of the Sword returned. But he remembered his rejection by the only one who had understood his desire to create such a sword, and he recoiled at the thought of following that will-of-the-wisp again. He remembered Rosa's scornful words about his 'meaningless dreams,' and yawned, and thought, 'What a foolish dream! As if there was such a place as Avalon, that I might find my wife there! She is gone, and will never wish to return. I really was a dreamer, as she said, and unworthy of her. Now I must return to the real world, and rekindle my father's forge. There may be no such thing as the Sword of Truth, but ordinary swords will still be needed by ordinary men.

'And perhaps one day when I am successful and rich, I will set out to find Rosa again, and win her back. Or perhaps she will come back to me, when she hears I have returned and become sensible and successful at last.' He did not admit it to himself, but he also thought 'Perhaps Gwynneth will come to me, if I become successful, now that Rosa is gone. Did she not say herself, "our destinies are linked"?' For his heart was still divided.

So he returned to his smithy, and gave the saddler his notice, and rebuilt his ruined forge, and began to make more practical swords, putting away his old dreams of the Sword of Truth. And the fragments of the sword that had shattered lay forgotten in the corner.

Soon Calibur became an armourer to the kings of the lands to the east of England, who were preparing for a great onslaught from the barbarians.

The busy months passed, full of cares and worries, and Calibur took on an apprentice, whose name was Padrafer, and he all but forgot his old hope of creating a magical sword and changing the world. The barbarians kept coming, and his swords kept getting better, sharper and tougher. But none of them was magical. And sometimes he saw the work which his swords and others like them had done: men limping along on one leg, or with one ear missing, or a hand or eye. And widows seeing him in the street would turn the other way.

And the religion of the Romans, forged under the dark clouds of the torture and tyranny of an empire that was no more, continued nevertheless to take hold in the hearts of the people, and he began to fear for his safety, being a smith and husband to one who was said to be a witch. For blacksmiths, along with Jews, Gypsies and women (it began to be whispered) are the natural enemies of Christ. Still, sometimes he prayed in secret to the Goddess for the return of Rosa, and he tried to live a balanced life, between the hot noisy forge and the cool leafy garden of herbs and roses and cabbages, which he had replanted. But he lived in the smithy until he could afford to rebuild the cottage, which remained in ruins.

Then late one day as he was closing an old man with hooded face came to the smithy, and offered him a little book. 'I suppose you want all my swords in exchange for it, old man?' said Calibur, with a grim smile, thinking of that fateful morning when the trader had sold him the Book.

'No sword you have could buy what I offer you now, though I hear you have become a good swordsmith,' replied the old man.

'Once long ago I gave all I had to buy one Book, which led me to madness and ruin. Never again will I make such a bargain!' said Calibur, beginning to bolt the shutters.

'This Book is for you, my son. It is free.'

'Who are you? Why do you not show your face?' said Calibur, suddenly afraid and hopeful at the same time. He felt the wheel of his fate turning again, as it had that day at the market so long ago.

'I am Anselm of Avebury. I wrote the Book which you followed to your ruin. I was under a vow of seclusion in the Hermitage, but I heard that you had come. Indeed, I pressed my ear to the wall and listened to your conversations, and when you left to seek your wife I heard your speech. That is when I saw the light of the Goddess, and wrote new truths, which speak of Her, and balance the old Book.

But the missionaries of Rome came, and converted the brothers, and I alone would not turn to their world-slandering doctrines, though they tortured me. That is why I do not show my face; it is branded and not fair to look upon – if it ever was! But when the brothers threw me out into the snow to die, I wandered into the arms of a band of pilgrims on their way to Avebury, and they gave me succour, and I lived, and went with them to seek the Goddess.

There I was reborn. Afterward I resolved to come in search of you, since it was you who (unknowingly) converted me to the wisdom of the Goddess. I want to teach you all the new truths I have learned, and expound the old in a new light. For your time has come; your destiny calls. Do you not feel it?'

'Perhaps I do, old man. But I am afraid of seeking for truth; afraid of not finding it; perhaps more afraid of finding it.'

'Then you are ready. Before, you thought that your mind alone could hold the truth, and be enlightened. So did I. But now I know, as you do, that the truth is only to be apprehended in our lives, by doing it; nay, by becoming it. And that is sometimes frightening, is it not?'

The old man's words stirred Calibur as he had not been stirred for many days, and so he said, 'Welcome, Anselm of Avebury! You may stay with me in my humble garret above the forge; it is not a palace, but it is warm and dry.'

So the old man stayed with Calibur, and in the evenings after Padrafer the apprentice had banked the fire and departed, Anselm taught him the five truths written in the book, all but the last one.

These were the five facets through which Anselm had looked into Life, and the concepts by which he began their elucidation:

THE FOUR ELEMENTS

BY WHICH ALL LIFE IS ORDERED

Two of which belong to the Masculine pole, and two to the Feminine.

I THE ELEMENT OF LOVE

Being defined as openness to the other, whether great or small, whether existing or merely possible. By love are the five doors of the senses flooded with all the beauty of all that is and may be; love is the Common Sense by which the many are perceived also as one. By love is the World and the Soul appreciated. Without love there is only pride and blindness. True life is receptiveness to the other, both the One and the Many. Love is the doorway to Faerie and the imagining of new Forms. Love is of the Divine Feminine; it is our Mother.

II THE ELEMENT OF BEAUTY

Being defined as the harmony of all that is, the harmony of the One and the Many, the Part and the Whole. When we love, we see every Part as a beautiful Whole, and every whole as part of a greater Whole; and through Imagination we explore that Whole. In Beauty is the path to Faerie and the creation of new Forms. Beauty is of the Divine Feminine; it is our Mother.

III THE ELEMENT OF TRUTH

Being defined as the laws by which all things relate. It is the logic and pattern of all flow, all life, on Earth, in Faerie and in Heaven. All things flow, all balance; nothing is lost, only transformed. By Truth new Forms are perfected. Truth is of the Divine Masculine; it is our Father.

IV THE ELEMENT OF FREEDOM

Being defined as the ability of all things to express their essence, in action and reaction to one another. The law of all things, on Earth, in Faerie, and in Heaven, is freedom constrained only by the truth — the way in which all things relate and react. So all things are free to be themselves; yet no act is without its consequences. By Freedom new Forms are manifested upon the earth. Freedom is of the Divine Masculine; it is our Father.

V THE FIFTH ELEMENT: THE QUINTESSENCE; THE GREAT UNION

This is both masculine and feminine, and neither; it is a third thing, a magical middle way between the two poles, a fusion of opposites. It is the element from which Faerie is made — and by it Avalon, the Blessed Isle, at favourable times approaches the shores of Earth. And by it the four elements work together in harmony.

Being defined as the union of the two Divine Feminine Elements with the two Divine Masculine, to create the Middle Way of True Life, the Union of Opposites, the Marriage of Heaven and Earth. He who has the two opposites within, is blessed and knows at once both masculine and feminine bliss, and has the power of both male and female. All White Magic comes from the power of the Fifth Element. The magical Sword of Truth and Freedom must be paired with the sheath of Love and Beauty. All unions of man and woman thus have the magical power to create the Fifth Element; very few do. From one such union will come the forging of the great Sword that is to be created for the restoring of the Faerie republic of Logres in Britain.'

VI OF THE GREAT DIVORCE

Black wizardry is the rebellion of the masculine elements against the feminine; then Truth and Freedom become fixed, unable to evolve, and turn to Hatred and Ugliness, and violence undoes the good that was intended.

Black witchcraft is the rebellion of the feminine elements against the masculine; then love and beauty turn to deception and enslavement.

And many black wizards will come, and in reaction many black witches will arise, and hatred and fear will separate Man and Woman, before the Goddess prevails again, and the Fifth element is reborn, and by it the Forms are re-created, and Logres returns to Britain.

There were many other prophecies in Anselm's book, and many thoughts on how the Fifth Element may be achieved, and how the ideal Forms to build Logres might be created, but no final answers. And he concluded:

'The greatest power we have is in the union of opposites, as man and woman. Yet how is that to be achieved in these days of strife, when the man fears yet dominates the woman, and the woman fears yet resists and deceives the man?'

'I was unlucky in love,' said Anselm to Calibur once as they watched two lovers walk hand in hand past the door of the smithy, 'Or, so I used to say. But ever since I heard your speech at the hermitage that day, I knew that in a woman I was offered the Goddess, and in Her, Life, but I was afraid of Life, and chose instead the pursuit of Truth. But the greatest truth is Life itself. And Life is only to be found in Love, not knowledge.' And he sighed, having at last told the whole truth about himself.

A few days later Anselm called Calibur to his bedside, and said, 'I am at death's door. I have fought the good fight, and though victory is not certain, I must leave the great Quest to others. For I am ready for the halls of rest. At sunset I will lay down my life and depart for the blessed realm.' Calibur asked him why he had not explained the last truth written in the book: that of the Fifth Element, the Marriage of Opposites.

'Because it is not complete. I myself do not know it, because I have not, in this life, actually become it. To learn it you must become it. To become it I foresee that you must go into the West and seek Avalon. For Rosa is there. And when you have found her, and have learned the secret, and are one with her, finish my book!'

'But, master, if the only way to Avalon is by knowing the Middle Way of the Fifth Element, and if I can only learn that with Rosa, how can I get there to find her?'

'Those who seek wisdom have already begun to possess her in their hearts, my son. Only, they must be single-hearted,' the old man replied.

And at sunset he died in Calibur's arms.

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7

The Road to Avalon

Calibur burned Anselm's body in the forge according to the old man's wishes, and took the ashes up into the mountains and scattered them to the four winds at the entrance to the cave of the Goddess.

The next day he entrusted the smithy to Padrafer his apprentice, saying, 'Farewell, perhaps forever! For I seek a land that lies beyond the margins of the World.'

'I knew you would go one day,' replied Padrafer.

And Calibur set off into the West, towards Land's End.

He wandered long over hill and dale, going ever westward, until one day he came to the top of a high ridge and saw the sea. He heard a cry below, and there was the goatherd, climbing towards him up the wind-blasted turf. They embraced, and the goatherd said, 'What took you so long?'

'I did not believe that Avalon truly exists, and as my father would say, I had a living to make,' replied Calibur. 'I thought it was wise to...'

'A "living"! "Wise"! Your kind of "wisdom" would have us all tending dusty shops and weary forges until we forget the green of the fields and the joy of life, and all the magic has departed from the land and the Goddess has no man to defend her honour!' cried the goatherd. He ran at Calibur, who was too surprised to draw his sword, and taking it by the hilt the goatherd flung it into the ground, and challenged him to a fight, and they wrestled. This time the goatherd was the stronger, as well as strangely agile, and pinning Calibur to the springy turf, he made him swear to never stop seeking life and magic and the Goddess. And Calibur said, 'I swear, by my life and She who upholds it!'

'That's better!' he grinned, letting Calibur get up again. 'I forgive you, for you have not yet been to Avalon. Now you must wait on the westernmost shore until the Faerie Isle appears. For it is true, it exists,' he said with shining eyes. 'Thanks to the icon which you gave me, I have been there.'

'You have been to the Blessed Isle! What is it like?'

It is a very fair land, full of wonders, and green, yet not in truth more fair and green than this. It is part of that world which the Book of the priests calls the Garden of Eden, and there the magic of life is not dimmed, and war does not ravage it, and there... if I may speak of it... the very Tree of Life still stands. Yet an evil has come to Aeden, and it is growing.'

'Did you see my... did you see Rosa there?' asked Calibur, suddenly fearful.

'No, I am sorry. But she is there, somewhere. You must find her; she needs your help.'

'Why, what has happened to her?' cried Calibur. But the goatherd would not say any more, except that she was safe. 'But only love will bring her back. Yet you forfeited that when you left her. He who sent me back gave me this message for you, if I should happen upon you:

"The way of true love, the way of the Fifth Element, is for the most part blissful and easy, blessed by the Goddess, strewn with rose petals. But for the fallen man, one who has forgotten the Goddess, regaining it is hard, a wandering, stony way through many pains, a labyrinth where the heart will be broken ere it remembers. Are you ready for this? If not, seek not Avalon."'

'I am ready for anything, to win back my love and fulfil my Destiny,' said Calibur. 'But this message fills me with foreboding.'

'Still, the heart knows what it seeks,' said the goatherd. 'It will lead you there, though for you, as the poet says:

The Joyful Island, Avalon

Lies on a lake of tears;

The blissful lovebird, Estamon

Flies in a forest of fears.

'Now, as payment for my help, give me your sword. Anyway, you'll not be needing it: no blade of steel may be taken into the land of Faerie.'

Calibur was afraid at the thought of going unarmed into the perilous enchanted realm, but he trusted the goatherd, and gave him the sword, which he had named Rosethorn. So they parted, and the goatherd went away eagerly into the East, where he sought a sign of his own destiny, while Calibur did as the goatherd told him, and journeyed on into the West until he came to Land's End. He climbed down the craggy cliffs to the shore to await the full moon and the vision of Avalon appearing on the western horizon, and the Ferryman coming out of the mist.

The moon had only just begun to wane, so he prepared for a long vigil on the cold shore. Finding a cave that overlooked the western sea, and a spring nearby, he set up camp there, and his companions were the penguins, puffins and other sea-fowl that fished in the stormy waters. He watched them through lonely hours. Bands of penguins dived like fish in the surging seas while others suddenly leapt from the water onto the rocks to sun themselves. The puffins flew faster than the wind, catching piper and racing back to their burrows in the cliffs. The seagulls sped on the relentless wind from the ocean and wheeled in the updrafts about the cliffs. Their wild cries rang over the thunder of the surf and the booming of the sea-caves. He imagined that he was flying with them, and cried out to them, and wished that the cry of his own heart might be as single-minded as theirs. Before, he had cursed Rosa's ducks, and the rat, and the roosters that woke him after a long night at the forge. But now he was thankful for the company of the wild creatures.

'If I had not seen the goatherd, I would think I was truly mad now, seeking Avalon in this lonely place,' he thought often as he wandered the shore or picked mussels and seaweed off the spray-drenched rocks to cook in the fire at the cave-mouth. And often he took out Rosa's old icon and looked at the broken image of the goddess, and thought of her lovely hands which once held it, and were now so beyond the borders of this world.

There came a night when the moon was almost full, and it seemed to Calibur to have a strangely bluish tinge. It was riding high above a sea that was unusually calm, except for the gentle swells that broke in long silver waves on the shore. And as he sat in the cave-mouth warming himself by the fire, wondering at the strangeness of the moon, Calibur saw the Faerie Isle of Avalon appearing like a ship on the horizon, mist-shrouded, glowing in the blue-tinged moonlight. He thought he could make out on its slopes the twinkling of distant faerie lights, and great fear and longing came upon him.

Then with a thrill of joy and fear he saw approaching over the sea a shining object like a great sword. But as it drew nearer to land he saw that it was a boat with shimmering sails swelled by an unseen breeze, high-prowed like a Viking ship. It was making straight for his headland, the bow-wave pearly in the moonlight. Fear of the barbarian invaders gripped him, until he thought, with a stab of a different kind of fear, 'It is far too small to be a Viking craft...and there is no war-chant... it must be the ferryman of Avalon!' He ran inside to get his bundle, which was all ready and waiting. Last of all he picked up Rosa's tattered icon from the hollow of the rock where he had kept it, and ran down to the shore.

In fear and trembling he waited in the shallows of the little bay of the headland, reviewing the Five Wisdoms he had learned from Anselm, hoping that they would enable him to answer the Ferryman's questions.

In a halo of silver-blue moonlight, the boat stood off just beyond the breakers. The Ferryman hailed him with the words, 'How far is it to Avalon, and who is worthy to cross over?'

'A thousand thousand leagues, or none;' he called back, 'for those who know Love and Beauty find Faerie in their hearts, and walk there always. Only they may cross over.'

'Yet, the isle exists outside of the heart also. I repeat: who is worthy to cross over in my boat to Avalon?'

'Those who honour the Truth of the Oneness of all things, and their sacredness in the Web of life.'

'Yet many they be who know these things, and pay lip-service to them. I repeat once more, who may cross over?'

'Those who from the heart live in love and beauty and truth, and in so living, awaken to their Destiny, woven by their ancestors and the Goddess in the great tapestry of time, and become free to be what they truly are.'

'Well said; yet still a man may know all these things severally, Love, Beauty, Truth and Freedom, and still not have the fruit of them all, by which he may enter Avalon. What is this Fifth thing, and do you possess it?'

'It is the union of them all, the Fifth Element, the Marriage of Opposites. I...' The gaze of the Ferryman penetrated to his soul, and he could not lie. 'I do not think I have it.' And he hung his head in despair.

'What is that in your hand?' said the Ferryman.

'It is an icon that belonged to my wife.'

'Why is it burned and broken?'

'It was burned by those who persecute the Goddess.'

'Where were you when this happened?'

'I was in the mountains, seeking the Sword of Truth.'

'What do you seek now?'

'I seek Rosa my wife. Please let me go with you to Avalon. I know she is there!'

The Ferryman said nothing as Calibur wept. The boat slowly turned and a wind sprang up from the land, filling the sails. Calibur, in despair, waded out as far as he dared; he could not swim. 'Wait! I beg you, take this icon, if you will not take me, and give it to Rosa, and tell her I love her always, and wish her well. But I was not worthy of her.' And a wave covered his head, but still he held out the icon.

The Ferryman smiled as he shook his old head. 'The beginnings of the Fifth Element,' he murmured. 'Just enough to get him across. About time!' He leaned hard on the tiller, and the boat came about and as it glided past, with one heave the old man lifted Calibur over the glistening gunwale. But the icon slipped over the side and slowly sank into the depths.

'If I cannot take her the icon; I will have to bring you instead - if she will have you!' said the old man gruffly, but his eyes twinkled in the moonlight. Calibur lay spluttering in the bottom as a wind from the shore filled the sails and the boat headed back out to sea.

Feeling the oaken planks of the boat lifting beneath him and the salt spray stinging his face, Calibur raised his head and, crying aloud for joy, thanked the ferryman, who only shook his head as he gripped the tiller and pointed the prow to Avalon. Behind them, Land's End was swallowed in a grey mist, while ahead the Faerie isle grew brighter, and the stars above grew strange.

So Calibur was carried off through the portal between the Worlds, into the blessed Isle of Avalon.

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8

The Sisters of Renunciation

It was as the goatherd had said. Avalon itself was but a part of a larger World, a place remembered by some on Earth as the Garden of Eden. Avalon was in a sacred lake of that world, and that lake was itself on a greater island, which the peoples of that world called Namaglimmë, the Starfish Isle, because it had five arms. And on the Tor Enyása, the High Plateau, in the middle of Namaglimmë was the Tree of Life, by whose magic and beauty the Nine Worlds were once linked.

And Calibur was greeted in a little bay of Avalon, and made welcome, and learned much of the languages and ways of that world by means of a magical Stone, one of the Orpadra, which means 'Mindstone'. He learned, too, of the fall of the once-wise Travellers, an ancient race, creatures who come from great creeping thorns, and who journey as wind-borne thistle-seeds across the heavens, to take root in foreign worlds.

Some of these Travellers had gone far into outer space where they met the Dark Entities of the Void, and now, Calibur was warned, began to teach terrible things: the renunciation of Life and the blessedness of the pure Void from which all life proceeded, and (they say) should not have. And they cursed the Goddess, saying that she was but an evil spirit, and all Her priestesses evil witches who kept souls enslaved to the lust of life. And these Travellers were known by the faithful of Aeden as the Aghmaath, which means 'Life-smotherers.'

By Calibur's time the Aghmaath had set up monasteries in Aeden, and though as yet they did no harm to others by force, their thoughts had darkened the air of Aeden, and some humans were being drawn into their thorn-hedged enclosures by their promise of blissful release from all the struggles of life.

Many books could be written of the lore of Aeden, and its history, and that of the Nine Worlds; and have been. But we must now pass over these great matters to follow Calibur as he sought his love and his destiny.

For a long while he searched the enchanted isle, though it was a strange land, hard to keep one's bearings in. And he asked all he met, 'Have you seen my wife, the Earth woman named Rosa?' It seemed that none of the fair inhabitants of Avalon knew where Rosa was or how to find her. Nor did the Ferryman who had brought her across the sea. But he comforted Calibur, saying, 'When the time is right, you will meet the Old Man of Avalon, and he will surely know.'

On Avalon, meanwhile, there was much dancing and singing, and more joy and beauty and magic than Calibur had ever imagined possible, and the people were hospitable, and he almost forgot why he had come there, so happy had he become, except that every pair of lovers reminded him that his own beloved was gone.

Then one night he stood alone upon the summit of Avalon, looking across the enchanted waters at the land of Aeden, wondering where in all that strange country Rosa was, when an old man appeared, coming up a hidden stair cut into the reddish rock. Calibur was afraid, for he felt a power in the man which seemed to tilt the very rock beneath his feet, and time seemed to fly away, and he stood exposed in a place beyond time. But the old man smiled, and held out his hand, and the earth stood still again, and he could breathe. And the old man told Calibur, 'No drastic action, such as yours in leaving your Rosa, is without effect, but it ripples down the warp and woof of time, shifting the threads in the great tapestry of Life.'

'Master, are you the one who sent me the warning by way of the goatherd?' asked Calibur, for he felt he was in the presence of a great seer and a wise man.

'I am. And it was I who called you here, for your destiny concerns me, too. Now, since you are here, I assume you are ready for any ordeal to find your beloved and your destiny, since you received from the goatherd my message warning you of the path ahead?'

'I am.'

'Then I will tell you what has happened to Rosa. She had a dream that you came back to the cottage where you once lived with her. For your sake, against my advice she took a boat and left the sacred isle to seek a way back to your land, since the Ferryman would not take her. She could not bear the thought that she would not be there to greet you. But the lake is treacherous to cross without the Ferryman, and in any case the path to Earth is not often open. Failing to find Britain, she tried to return to Avalon, but was blown off-course, and landed on the far shore, in Namaglimmë. She had heard of the Tree of Life, high on the sacred plateau of Tor Enyása, whose magic in former times linked Aeden with Earth, and so she decided to seek it. But my arts tell me that on the way she was ensnared by the mindwebs of the Aghmaath, and has departed for a thorn convent to become a devotee of the Void.'

Calibur felt the earth again move under his feet, as a black horror and fear gripped his innards. The old man steadied him, and guided him down the steps in the rock to his cave, where he told him many things that he would need to know on his quest to find Rosa and win her back. 'Especially, you must guard your mind from their probings, for they can read the minds of humans like a book, and turn them to despair and love of the Void,' he warned Calibur. 'The Aghmaath have a third eye, which is set in their foreheads covered by spiny lashes, which open to reveal the eye. With this eye they transmit thought-forms of great power. Of old this power was used to create and teach, but now only to bring despair and thoughts of the Void. So beware!

'On the other hand, if you wish to be allowed into the convent at all, you must pretend that you are open to their doctrines. But I say again, beware! They are subtle, and will soon turn your thoughts to the ways of death.'

'Is there then any hope that I can turn her back, without myself succumbing to their snares?' asked Calibur in dismay.

'Yes, if you trust your heart and do not follow doctrines of seeming logic, as you are prone to do.'

The next morning, with a sick heart but full of determination, Calibur set out to recover his beloved from the distant convent, and the Ferryman took him across to the shores of Namaglimmë, and wished him well as he set off into the woods that surrounded the lake of Avalon, making for the western arm of the great starfish-island. There, the old man had told him, were the strongholds of the Aghmaath. For in ancient days that whole peninsula had belonged to them, before they fell into darkness.

Over the northern mountain range he went, then turning west came down into the great wide valley that once was known as the valley of the rainbow, as it held a long lake with a waterfall over which a rainbow hung. Now it is known as the Valley of Thorns, and the lake is called Deadwater.

But in those days the valley still seemed fair, though it was a solemn place, and the Aghmaath missionaries who met him there were grim, and told him that he was not welcome, unless he came as a convert to join one of the monasteries. But Calibur did as the old man had said, and pretended to be a trader, and offered the missionaries some gemstones from Avalon, sapphires which the old man had given him. But they waved him on, saying, 'Be gone! We are the Phangür Aghinax, of the holy Order of the Renunciators. We have no desire for such baubles.' He passed a strange hill, in which there was a great dark entranceway that made him shiver, though the sun was shining. Skirting this hill, he came to a wilderness where creeping thorns grew over the land, choking all other life. Their form of growth was such that they formed great hexagonal fields, surrounded by the impenetrable thorn hedges which rose from the main branches. And inside the hedges were tunnels by which the Aghmaath could travel unseen.

In one such field was the convent of the Sisters of Renunciation, where the women had made cells of wattle and daub for sleeping, and a meeting-hall, all built around a square in which was a central sacrificial fireplace with a tall black chimney.

And there lived Rosa with her sisters in the Void, having not a care in the world, for she had renounced it. Now she was preparing for death even in life, cutting the threads that tie mortals to the wheel of suffering. Only the thinnest silver thread remained to bind her to this life, until the Void saw fit to let her go to her eternal rest in the nothingness. Then she who was called the Phagzagira, or Wombcutter, would come, and ritually remove her womb, the sacred source of new life, and cursing it, bless the one who had relinquished it as she bled to death (or, if she survived, she would herself become a Phagzagira). Many of Rosa's sisters had already thus shuffled off the gravecloths of this life, and found final peace, and their wombs had been burned in sacrifice to the Void, and their ashes scattered to fertilise the ground where the Apples of Forgetfulness grew.

Those sisters that remained lived only to lead the new novices brought in by the Phangür Aghinax, the missionaries of the Aghmaath, into the path of renunciation. And just as a star burns more brightly as it falls into a black hole, or the sky flames with rich colours at sunset, so the sisters of renunciation felt great joy as they ate the Apples of Forgetfulness and waited for the final release of death, sitting together in the shade of the sadly creaking thorns and singing hymns to the Void.

When Calibur finally arrived at the gates of the convent, the Aghmaath guards fixed their baleful eyes on him, reading his mind. Then one spoke in a terrible voice: 'You may not enter here, for we see into your heart, that you seek one of the sisters, to seduce her back into bondage to lust.'

'I beg of you, if there is any truth in your doctrines, let me hear it from her own lips,' replied Calibur humbly, And as the Old Man of Avalon had taught him, he made his mind open to thoughts of renunciation, though indeed the guard's voice made his heart waver from his purpose to save Rosa, and itself totter at the brink of the Void. The Aghmaath gazed at Calibur until his mind writhed under the withering stare which seemed to probe his very thoughts. At last the guard replied,

'Very well, you shall hear it from her own lips, and be enlightened! But if you harden your heart to her words, we will chastise you with whips of thorn and cast you out into the ditch before these gates to die like a dog.'

They swung the thorn-gates open, and two of the Phangür Aghinax came out to meet him. Though the sun was shining their touch was icy, and in their proximity a shadow was cast over his heart. They led Calibur into the compound, where Rosa prayed a little apart from the others. She was pale, and her eyes seemed huge in her gaunt face, but to him she was the most beautiful sight in the world. The Phangür Aghinax released him and withdrew. He ran forward to embrace her. But she pushed him away and said, 'Get thee gone, lustful stranger!'

He fell back, staggering as if stuck to the heart. 'It's me, Calibur, your husband!' he managed to reply, but his words sounded hollow in his own ears. 'Rosa, please...'

'Rosa — that is no longer my name' she interrupted. 'Now I am Tavapagh, child of Nothingness, the blessed nothingness of the Void.'

'Rosa, I was wrong to leave you, to seek the One on the mountaintop. Now I have seen that Life...'

Rosa interrupted him. 'Life! Life is an illusion to be seen through, a petty trick by a bad magician, to be mocked and ridiculed, not suckled and nurtured like a bastard child. For to embrace life is to embrace the very serpent which has bitten you so that you are in torment from its poison. Only in relinquishing the will to life can the soul find a cure, and finally crush the serpent's head.'

Calibur felt the shadow of the Phangür Aghinax over his heart. They were listening, waiting for him to yield to the inevitable... With an effort he remembered why he had come, and said,

'But the Goddess herself weaves the fabric of life. Surely you do not mean to deny her?'

'So you have found the Goddess? Then I pity you, for you are but a fly in her accursed web. But as for me, being a woman, I was far worse: I was one of the evil spiders who seek to spin out more woe, bringing new life into this vale of tears through the accursed womb-portal, turning the wheel of endless suffering, of birth and rebirth. At least my womb did not open to cast a child into this world of woe! And soon, even by the next festival of the Void, I hope to be accounted worthy to leave the accursed web, be rid of the womb and spin no more.'

And as the sun beat down on him, Calibur felt the weight of her words, and it seemed an unutterable weariness to him to go on, resisting the truth of what she had told him. She was pitying him, wounding him with a healing despair, hurting in order to heal. The truth of her words seemed to him like the very sword of Truth, piercing his defences as it had pierced hers. He yearned to join her in relinquishment and find rest at last. He became aware that she was holding out an apple. He took it in his hand and looked at it, shiny and red. He raised it to his mouth. The sisters of renunciation were crooning a hymn to the Void which spoke of rest and eternal peace, and Rosa joined in, singing soft and sweet.

Suddenly he heard another voice inside his head, and it spoke very differently:

'Don't be a fool! Did I not warn you of the apples?' It was the Old Man of Avalon. And Calibur remembered the Goddess, and the beauty of Life and all its forms rushed in a glorious vision before his eyes, and he knew he could not slander it, though it stung him with a thousand stings. With a great effort he lowered the apple, and said, 'I cannot deny Life.'

Then the Phangür Aghinax stepped forward, and held him with pincer-like hands, and pressed him into the thorns, which curled and held him fast while they beat him with thorny rods until his clothes were in shreds. Then they threw him bleeding into the ditch outside the gates, warning him never to return, and the gates of the convent were closed against him.

Pierced with the pain of rejection and with the thorn-lashes of the gate-keepers, he lay there until night-fall, and grotesque stick-insects from the thorn hedge above began to drop down and crawl over his body, and they clung on when he tried to brush them away. Screaming, he sat up. He groaned, 'How much longer must I endure this? When will I be helped in my quest to find my Destiny? Will nothing go right? Am I cursed forever by the Goddess — if She exists?'

He heard the voice in his head speak again:

'And how long will you continue to set an hourglass to the Creator of Time? How long will you keep seeking a sign to prop up your faith? Even now, behold, help comes!'

Calibur looked up and there was someone approaching along the road that wound past the convent walls. He saw that it was a young shepherd leading a little flock of sheep. The boy stopped, and giving him water to drink, listened to his story of woe.

'And now,' said Calibur, 'if you have a sword, have mercy on me and kill me, for I have lost all hope and wait only for death.'

But the shepherd said to him, 'Shame on you! Faint heart never won fair Lady! The only way back to her now is through suffering and sacrifice. You must find a way over, or under, or around the thorns. But next time do not come without an offering to win her heart back, to remind her of the Goddess, and to release her from the spell of the Void.'

Then the shepherd led Calibur away from the gates to a place where there was a pleasant spring which trickled down into a shady pool. There he bathed Calibur's wounds, and removed the thorns, which were working their way inwards. The pain was worse almost than when he was being beaten, but he felt renewed faith in life, and the love of the shepherd reminded him that love is stronger than death, and makes life worthwhile, even in the midst of suffering.

'But what offering could I bring her?' asked Calibur when at last his wounds were clear of thorns, and he could speak again.

'Perhaps an icon from the sacred artists of Baz Apédnapath,' suggested the shepherd.

'And where is that place?'

'To the west of Lake Avalon, and south over the High Pass, and down to the gates of the canyon. For Baz Apédnapath means 'Bottomless Canyon,' and there in the cliffs dwells a community of "Seekers of Truth", as they call themselves. They are divided into disputing sects, among which are many skilled iconographers. I go that way now, to trade my wool and cheese for silks and icons and diamonds to trade with the North-eastern villages. Then one day I will be a successful merchant, and be able to win the hand of my love, whose father despises me, as I am just a poor shepherd.'

The shepherd wished him well, and departed, after feeding him with cheese made from sheep's milk, and bread and cider, which was made, he said, from the apples which grew in the blessed orchards of the Lady by Lake Avalon. And the miraculous fragrance of that cider brought back to him the memory of all the fragrance of life, so that he marvelled that he had wished to die, and that he had given up on Rosa so soon.

As the rich golden sun of Aeden set, he lay in the soft grass by the pool where he had bathed, and gazed into the water to see the colours of the sunset reflected deep within. Closer, he saw his own reflection surrounded by the padmaësta, the hopeflower of Aeden, and his face merged and was transformed into an image of Rosa, glowing with life, more beautiful than he had ever seen her, the very image of Ainenia, the Lady of Aeden.

Then, as he stared at the lovely reflection in the water, he was suddenly seized with the urge to go to Baz Apédnapath and learn to paint icons, and paint such an icon of Rosa that it would show all his love for her, which was now as high as the sky, as wide as the earth, and as deep as the sea. And in that image, he must capture the power of the Fifth Element, the union of opposites in the sacred embrace of Life. Thus would he portray to Rosa the spirit of Ainenia, through whose being shines the love of the Goddess. Then Rosa would remember the love she once had for Life, and for him, and she would consent to be his wife again.

So he sprang up, and hurried through the gathering darkness to catch up with the shepherd, and beg to be allowed to go with him to Baz Apédnapath.

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9

The Icon-makers

The shepherd (whose name was Estanam, which means in the language of Aeden 'Soul-hope') was surprised to see Calibur again, but very glad of his company, and together they made the long pilgrimage to the Canyon, passing on the way the Applegate Vale where the beautiful Springs of the Wouivre rise before flowing down to Lake Avalon. 'These springs come from the caves of the Lake of the Canyon,' Estanam told him, 'but we must go over them, to the High Pass and thence down to the Northern Gate of the Canyon. For the caves are sacred to the monks and priestesses of the Wouivre, and they allow none to enter them.' And bathing in the Springs of the Wouivre, they felt the life of Aeden flowing into them, and they laughed for joy.

Finally they arrived with the flock at the High Pass, and with difficulty guided all the sheep up the narrow ledges and over the pass to the other side, where at last they saw the line of the great canyon snaking out almost to the horizon, ending at the feet of a distant mountain crag. Estanam said, 'That is the Haunted Mountain of Kallaxzür, or Baldrock, sacred to the monks of the Wouivre, who make pilgrimage there every spring to unite the two Wouivre energies, of sky and earth, for the year to come.'

Arriving at the North Gate Estanam correctly answered the Nine Questions of the Gatekeeper, which were instituted by the Seekers of Truth to keep out the 'ignorant riff-raff'. So they were granted entry into the realm of Baz Apédnapath, whose communities were strung out along great overhanging shelves high in the canyon walls. And they passed through the Courtyard of the Labyrinth and saw the Canyon, and far below, the deep green waters of the Bottomless Lake, where the monks of the Wouivre rowed longboats to and fro between their subterranean monasteries.

And Estanam took him to that guild of icon-makers which he thought would be most compatible with his hope. He was brought before their leader, an old man said to be a master of iconography in all its forms. The master asked Calibur, 'What is your hope, what is your destiny?' Calibur felt a rush of joy that he had come so close to his true destiny, and that he was among such people, who understood about such things, being dedicated to the portrayal of them in sacred art.

'Sire, I am Calibur of Edártha,' he said. 'I have come to Baz Apédnapath to learn the art of iconography, to paint a divine likeness of Ainenia in the guise of Rosa my estranged wife, and of my own soul in union with hers, in the sacred Marriage of Opposites. And when I have won her back from the worship of the Void, I wish to return to my own world and forge a Sword such as that world has not yet seen, for the deliverance of my land of Logres, and to plant a seed of Aeden upon her soil that will grow into a tree of life for our people.'

'Good! You have a large vision! Also, it seems you have already a passion for the heart of our work: the representation of the four elements and their union in the Goddess, by means of the Fifth Element.'

'You use the very words of my old Teacher, Anselm of Avebury!' cried Calibur. Then Estanam said, 'It seems you have found your next Teacher. Farewell, and good luck! May you one day paint the icon which will bring your love back to you.' And he departed for the villages of the North-east where his own love dwelt. Then Calibur laid out the sapphires and also the agathra of Avalon, amber from the life-sap of the jeweltree which the Old Man had given him so that he would be able to pay for his tuition, and the Teacher accepted them with thanks, especially the agathra, which was used for icon varnish, and glowed with the light of the Tree of Life. 'Though it is our way to freely teach all who ask, if we deem them ready, and we receive from them help in our basic chores, and later, hopefully their support when they themselves become masters.'

Calibur replied, 'Master, how long does this take? For I am a man in a hurry.'

'Hurry?' the old man repeated the word as if trying to remember its meaning. 'My son, the basic training takes nine years — at least. But to become a Master, it is not possible to get to that by the passage of time, only by the pathway through the Labyrinth of life. That is your own journey to the sacred Centre of your life, which you must find in your own way and time.'

But Calibur did not hear his last words, so dismayed was he at the mention of the nine years.

'I do not have nine years! I must return to my Lady within the year, or she will die. She has said she will lay down her life at the next festival of the Void. For she has become a devotee

of death.'

'Then return, and when you have finished your business with her, come back and you may begin.'

'But... I wanted to paint her an icon, to reach her heart, and turn her back from death.'

'And you love her?'

'Yes, I think so — though I cannot claim to know her

any more.'

'But do you love her with all your heart and soul?'

Calibur hesitated, then suddenly he remembered his vision in the smithy so long ago, when he saw that beautiful soul, and he heard Gwynneth saying to him, 'You have seen the image of the Goddess in me; and that is good. Now you must see her in your own wife — which will be even better.' Calibur remembered his despair at those words, and blushed. Now he saw hope in them, that finally his heart would be whole and at one with his head. He remembered Gwynneth's next words: 'If you learn to love her, you will have the goddess. And if you have the goddess, in her you have all women. I am no different, in essence, from your wife — I am just another facet of Her, one that your heart seeks, because it is a part of what you yourself are, and long to become.'

Now suddenly he felt no more any division: his love was focused: his soul was in the Goddess, and in Rosa he was one with Her. 'It is so simple!' he thought.

'I love her as my own soul, and with all my heart!' he cried aloud.

'That is better. Good! Now, I perceive, you are very near the centre of your personal Labyrinth. So there is some hope for you to achieve that which you desire within one year. You must follow your heart, and learn just that which you need to paint one perfect picture of your beloved, and into that put all your love, your passion, and your yearning for the Goddess. You must know your own soul, and portray it in union with hers.' He looked at Calibur as if summing him up. 'And, ideally, you will portray both your souls in union with the Soul of the World, and the Soul of the World in union with the Goddess, and the Goddess in union with the One. Then the Fifth Element will shine through the icon, and it will have the power to call her back from the brink — and perhaps many others also.' Calibur nodded, though the task sounded completely beyond his powers.

'Now, about the basics of the Icon...' the teacher began in a new voice as he gave his introductory speech, and Calibur tried to listen intently to every word. But all he could think about was the perfect icon he would paint for Rosa.

The old master set him to work under the panel-maker, and the framers, gilders and varnishers, until he knew which were the best panel-woods and gesso coatings, frames and varnishes for all icons, the single, double and the triptych. 'For you do not yet know the form which your icon must take,' said the Master.

Next he was shown the basics of the art of the paint-maker, how to grind earths of red and blue and yellow, ochre and ultramarine, fine gold and silver powders and crushed diamond, and to mix them with the golden yolks of eggs and spring water to make tempera paint, which glows over the snow-white gesso and the gilding like the colours of the rainbow of the Goddess. 'For if you do not know the essences of the substances which make the colours, how can you paint the essence and beauty of the soul?' said the Master.

Then he was taught proportion and sacred geometry, which he loved greatly, remembering his early days learning from his father, and later the discussions with the hermits about the world as the book of the One, written in the language of mathematics and sacred geometry.

He remembered Anselm's wisdom of the Five Elements, and decided he must paint a triptych, on the Left panel Love and Beauty, and on the Right Truth and Freedom; and then in the Middle panel, the largest, he would paint the Fifth Element, the union of all in perfect harmony, in the form of Rosa in union with his own soul. And now that he knew what he would do, it seemed almost within his grasp, and he thought he might finish in a day.

But many days passed, and the master left him to study a single leaf for hours, or a bee or a fish from the lake far below, and sometimes his heart chafed against the slowness of his mind as it crept towards the mystic goal, and he heard the ringing of the blacksmiths' hammers further down the Canyon, and he longed to hold a hammer and tongs again, and pound the red-hot steel into swords.

Finally one day the master allowed him to begin on the human face, beginning with the eye, 'the window of the soul.' And he learned to reflect in the eye a world of feeling, and the light of the Soul of the World. Then the contours of the face were to be rendered to show the miraculous bone beneath, and over the bone, the mysterious life which coursed beneath the skin, and finally the divine light which played upon the silken surface of the skin and sparkled on the hair like the hand of the Goddess Herself.

At last he was sent with the other students to copy the great works in the libraries of the community, and he was dazzled and dismayed by their beauty. But he learned to break them down into hands, and eyes, and background and foreground, light and shade, solids and glaze, until he saw the mystic whole as a harmony of many parts, and at times it even seemed to be no longer a mystery, but simply a tissue of techniques. Yet at other times something ineffable seemed to glow within the paintings, especially when the lightnings played on the Tor Enyása and the agathra varnish glowed, making the images seem alive with an inner light, and he stood in awe.

After that, he was set to work helping the master each morning by preparing panels and painting backgrounds, and gilding or setting gemstones into the icons, and in the afternoons he helped with a background on the master's own latest creation, a great painting for the guild hall itself. And in the evenings he made side-panels for his own triptych, and painted Love and Beauty on the left-hand panel and Truth and Freedom on the right. But as for the Middle, the master told him to wait. 'For if you are to paint the soul, you must paint from the soul,' he said.

Finally one day the master said, 'Calibur, I think it is time. You may begin painting your own image of the Goddess, in the likeness of Rosa, in union with your own soul.' And he smiled as Calibur hopped around the studio and whooped until the canyon echoed with his cries of joy.

But it was to take many trials and false starts and heartbreaks before Calibur had the right outline, and many more before he had modelled the face. He meditated daily, and his soul grew brighter within him, and the Master saw that sometimes his face shone. He spent hours looking at the face of the icon before adding just one brush-stroke or two, or another thin layer of agathra glaze, then retiring. And he painted the eyes, and smile, and the contours of the skin, and the braided hair lifted by a breeze from Avalon.

As he worked, he felt the hand of the Goddess on him, enveloping him in love, and he felt the fire of the Fifth Element growing within, as he thought of Rosa and himself in union, and of their place in the great dance and tapestry of life. And this thought wove itself into every brushstroke, and he knew that he was painting from the soul. He began to understand the Master's words, that painting is a journey far beyond mere likeness, where one might say, 'Look, that is like a woman I know!' to union of the image with its ideal object, when one would see and at once apprehend that object, a facet of the very Goddess herself, shining through the image on the sacred surface.

'And then,' the Master said, 'the viewer may know that all is sacred, not just the icon, but all material things, and She in whom they live and move and have their being.'

But as Calibur painted, he knew that one thing was lacking: the image of Rosa-Ainênia in union with his own soul must result in something tangible. And he went away and lay, as he was in the habit of doing, on the edge of the canyon, and meditated as the sacred barges of the monks of the Wouivre glided beneath him on the dark waters far below. And he saw that there was a barge approaching from the northern end where he had never seen a barge before. In the barge stood women in long robes of blue, and in their midst one dressed in white with long hair of gold, and a garland on her head. Her barge drew near to the monks' barges, and a dark-haired man dressed all in green, with a circlet of gold on his head, came from one of the barges and stepped into her barge. They stood together, and petals were thrown all about them, and joyful singing rose from the canyon as the man departed with the woman in the barge. 'It is a sacred marriage!' thought Calibur. 'So the monks of the Wouivre are not as ours, celibate. They marry, and have children also, I suppose.'

Then he realised what he was to paint in the icon: a child. He laughed that it was so simple and obvious – or it would have been to Rosa. He leapt to his feet and ran back to begin work joyfully on the final element of the icon. He found a mother and child for a model, and as he sat drawing the child suckling at the breast of its mother a great desire came to him to be a father and to see Rosa as a mother.

One day the Master came around and saw a group of people staring at the icon, exclaiming, 'It is the very image of Ainênia herself, and her blessed child!' but Calibur was unaware of them, bending in rapt concentration as he added the halo. 'It is ready,' said the master. 'The Idea and the image are one, just as your soul, and hers and that of the child are one. Now, build them a frame worthy of their beauty!' And he gave him rubies and some of the sapphires of Avalon Calibur had brought, and diamonds from the mines of Baz Apédnapath, and precious tarazura, or jeweltree, wood which is strong as ivory but light as cedar and, flecked with gold and silver, holds the light of moon and sun within its grain. And the Master told him, 'The Tree of Life itself is of this mighty kindred, which grows as high as the Canyon is deep, and its roots seek out all the minerals of the earth to weave its wood and give energy to its central Jewel, by which the Worlds are linked.' For in the Tree of Life was a golden crystal, which is called the Heartstone of Aeden, or Arcra, and written as a palindrome thus:

For Arcra means the 'Lightning of the Uncreated', in perfect balance, having no beginning and no end. The Arcra came from the World of the Crystalline Entities, in the ancient times of the Order of the Makers.

The frame of the icon was a joy to make, now that he knew that the image was worthy of housing in a frame such as this, and every piece of it was an act of reverence for the Goddess whose love seemed to shine from the painting, so that it was as if he had not himself painted it, but it had materialised from the very air and soil and light of Aeden by some divine magic.

When the picture was finally secured into the frame, Calibur added as covers the left-hand panel of Love and Beauty, and the right-hand panel of Truth and Freedom, pivoting them with hinges of finely wrought silver from the smithies of the east beyond Baldrock, where the silver-mines were. And he polished the agathra varnish on the jeweltree wood of the frame until it shone with a deep glow.

Then he closed the cover panels and wrapped the precious icon in blue silk, put it in a strong linen bag marked with the sign of the Guild, and after saying his farewells to all the students and masters, who were now like brothers to him, and to the Master who had become like a father, he set off to find Rosa in the thorn convent.

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10

The Anklebiter

When he arrived, he saw that the thorn walls had grown even higher, and the gatekeepers even more hostile. They refused him an audience with Rosa, saying, 'Why have you returned? Did we not beat you severely enough? The Earth woman has taken vows of silence; she does not need you, being in love with the Void, which gives her peace - something you can never have or give, as long as you cling to this life and wantonly seek to propagate it.' And they began to train their probing minds upon him to break him.

Calibur, seeing their third eyes beginning to open, ran and hid himself in the deepest thickets that lay about the pond where the shepherd had bathed him. They did not follow him; he was but a stray dog to them; their time had not yet come for the great missions that were later to bring all Aeden under their sway. For the Guardians still held the Tor Enyása where the Tree of Life was, and the Aghmaath's power to extend their dominion was limited by the Guardians and the Tree of Life. For in those days the Tree of Life still had its Jewel.

That night he camped by the pond, and admired its beauty as he had the first time when the sunset colours shone from its calm surface and made his heart glad though he was wounded from his whipping by the Aghmaath. Soon the many-coloured stars of Aeden rose, and his hope grew that he would indeed reach Rosa and win her back with the beauty of the icon.

And as he meditated on all the wonders of the World, one that he had never seen before appeared before his eyes: Elenázura, the Blue Moon of Aeden, sailing over the trees, reflecting in the still waters of the pond. And about its banks all the padmaësta flowers opened and turned to adore her, their pearly white petals tinged blue in the moonlight.

A strange bird began to call. It was the estamon, which means 'love's hope' in the tongue of Aeden. Some also call it the moonbird, for it sings only on the nights of the Blue Moon. Now its mate replied in exquisite song, and other pairs joined in, until the whole land seemed full of singing moonbirds, like a dawn chorus of the night.

Then he remembered that the Blue Moon was the sign of the date he had dreaded all during his stay with the icon-makers: the beginning of the festival of the Void. And on the third day of the festival, devotees would give themselves to the dark fire of the Void. His heart almost stopped beating, and he felt sick even in the midst of his rapture. But the moonbirds kept singing, and somehow he could not believe she would kill herself, when the beauty and love of the Goddess was all around, streaming through the moonlight into everything.

'The Goddess is surely with me — and her!' he sighed, and tears rolled down his cheeks. He lay down in perfect peace and slept.

But the next morning, the first day of the festival of the Void, it was hot, and the sombre thoughts of the convent and its fearsome guards bore down on him, and soon Calibur was almost in despair again, even in the beauty of that place, which had revived and delighted him only the night before in the blue moonlight. Now he hardly noticed it or felt any joy in its beauty. Instead, the memory of his confrontation with the guards lingered and grew in his mind, and he feared their cruel lashes, and kept remembering what Rosa had said, that she had peace now that she had understood the futility of life and the blessedness of renunciation and oblivion. He lay back and let the thought grow within him: Oblivion. It felt better to be going with the flow of the river of degeneration instead of vainly struggling against its all-powerful current. Rosa was probably already there. He would go to be with her...

Suddenly he became aware of a growling in the thorns on the other side of the pond. He crept around the water's edge to investigate. It was not a large animal, he could tell. But the wilds of Aeden were still strange to him; it could be anything. He looked into a little dell off the banks of the pond, and there, caught in a thorny trap, was an anklebiter. He had heard of these creatures from Estanam, and seen pictures of them at Baz Apédnapath, so he knew what to expect. 'Keep your boots on, because they will bite at your ankles — hence the name,' the shepherd had said. He approached carefully, and the growling increased, and the little badger-like creature prepared to defend itself to the death. But Calibur wrapped his hand in a cloth and freed it, whereupon it bit his boot, and scurried off, limping. 'Predictable little creatures!' Calibur laughed out loud, and suddenly felt better. He drank from the pond, and sat down to ponder what he should do next.

But the gloomy mood began to descend on him again, as he tried and failed to think of a plan to reach Rosa. And night fell.

The next morning, being the second day of the festival of the Void, as Calibur tried to decide which of his desperate plans to try, the anklebiter returned. It came in little scurries, sheltering behind tree-trunks, until it was behind a tree very near to where Calibur sat. Then it crept out and laid a small blue crystal at his feet. 'This is exactly what Estanam said they do!' he laughed, and he picked up the crystal. He knew what to do next: he laid the gift back at his feet, and the anklebiter came and took it back. Then it deposited it at his feet again. This was repeated, until finally Calibur knew it was safe to keep the gift, and he put it in his pocket, thanking the little creature aloud. He named it Chiseller, for its sharp front teeth, which had scored the leather of his boot.

And the anklebiter followed him as he crept towards the thorn wall, trying to find a gap through which to wriggle. But when he went to touch the thorns, they whipped about, and would have caught him but for Chiseller's shrill warning cry. The Aghmaath came running, and Calibur narrowly escaped by flinging himself into the ditch alongside Chiseller, who covered himself with weeds and lay as dead.

That night Chiseller slept curled up at his feet in the thorny hollow where Calibur had hidden, outside the thorn wall of the convent, so near to Rosa and yet so far away. He heard the mournful gong calling the women to prayers, and their chanting of hymns to the Void late into the night. And when he finally nodded off his dreams were dark, full of thorny obstacles, until he knew he was lost in a labyrinth of thorns, and the Aghmaath were hunting him, and Rosa was calling to him, 'Give yourself up! They are your friends!' Then she turned into one of the thorn men herself, dressed in a pale ragged nightgown, wearing a crown of thorns from which her blood dripped over the veil she wore. She came up to him, and dread filled him as she lifted the veil. Looking into her face, he saw a death's head, and an icy darkness through the sockets of her eyes. He felt for his sword, and swiping at her, found that he had cut open her belly even to the womb, and a child fell out crying. The Aghmaath pounced and carried it off. He tried to scream, but now Rosa moved closer, and began to kiss him, and he knew it was the smothering kiss of Death.

He woke to find the anklebiter licking at his face and nudging him frantically. Looking about the glade where the pond gleamed in the starlight, as if in a continuation of his nightmare Calibur saw the gliding forms of two Aghmaath. Trembling, he slid back into the shadows, and crawled blindly after Chiseller through the undergrowth of clinging ferns and long grasses. Suddenly the anklebiter stopped. Looking up, Calibur saw that the thorns were spread overhead so thickly as to block out all but a few of the stars. But ahead there was a low sandstone bank, with thorn-roots scrambling over it, the mass of rootlets forming a curtain over a dark overhang from which fear and horror seemed to flow like an icy vapour. The anklebiter scurried into the blackness, then re-emerged, looking at him intently. He could see the gleam of the little creature's eyes in the faint starlight. He heard his own heart pounding. Suddenly he remembered the goatherd's warning before he came to Avalon:

The Joyful Island, Avalon

Lies on a lake of tears;

The blissful lovebird, Estamon

Nests in a forest of fears.

And he remembered the moonbirds' song by the pond under the Blue Moon. 'Still, I am not going in there!' he whispered fiercely. But the anklebiter growled and whined so loudly he decided he must try. Shutting his eyes, he brushed past the horrible curtain, and found himself at a dead end, and was about to turn and flee. But Chiseller was busy, digging as if his life depended on it. 'You know I really want to get in there, don't you?' said Calibur. The anklebiter ignored him and kept furiously digging. Calibur took a knife from his bundle and began to help.

All that night they tunnelled side by side, and for a while fear was forgotten. Every now and then Chiseller would back up with the spoil, and deposit it outside. He seemed tireless, while Calibur felt his energy ebb. Strange thoughts came into his mind as he dug, of graves and being buried alive, or going on and on until he came to a strange world of perpetual dark, where zombies wandered, neither dead nor alive. He was very thirsty, and his head began to pound. Finally he slumped down in the tunnel and said, 'I can't go on.' But Chiseller nipped at his boots, and growled in his high-pitched way that made Calibur laugh in spite of himself. So he continued digging.

Finally there came a gleam of light in the furthest pocket of the tunnel where Chiseller dug, and his black nose covered in sand sniffed the fresh air excitedly. They both resumed at a furious rate until there was a big enough hole for Calibur to put his head and shoulders through, after he had managed to push Chiseller back. There was the compound, with the dreary little huts of wattle and daub and the longer meeting-house, all mud-grey in the pale light before dawn. It was now the third day of the festival of the Void, and Calibur tried not to think about the ritual of death which was to come.

He turned to the anklebiter and said, 'Now it is up to me, little fellow. You wait here.' He took the icon out of his bundle and wriggled out of the hole. But the anklebiter growled so loudly that he had to let it come. Together they crept towards the huts, peering in each in turn, looking for Rosa.

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11

The Thorn Convent

At last they found Rosa's hut. But she was lying on a cold table, sprinkled with white ashes, laid out as if for a funeral, and Calibur's heart froze within him. He silently opened the door and approached her where she lay. 'Rosa, I have returned!' he whispered, praying to hear her stir. She did not move. He bent over and kissed her brow; it was cold. Outside, dawn was breaking, and the convent was waking. 'Please, don't be dead, my love!' he cried, and held her hand. She stirred and turned her face towards him, but her eyes were still shut.

An old woman appeared at the door, holding a knife of flint. Its chipped edge glinted razor-sharp in the cold light of dawn. 'Who are you to disturb one who gives up her womb and so passes blameless to her eternal rest?' she asked in a deep voice. Her deep-set eyes glared, and her skin was stretched like parchment over her skull, and her hair was smeared with white ashes. For she was the Phagzagira, the Wombcutter of the convent. Chiseller growled, the hair standing up on his back, for he sensed the presence of death. And Calibur felt himself falling into a black void at the centre of which was the wombcutter's haggard face.

With an effort Calibur averted his gaze from the horror of the Phagzagira. 'I am Rosa's husband, and I have painted her this!' he replied, and with shaking fingers he unwrapped the icon. As he opened the panels, the dawn rays of the sun shone in the door of the hut and illuminated the face of Rosa-as-Ainênia nursing the blessed child, and the gems on the frame sparkled. The Phagzagira's power was broken. She stepped back, dropping the knife, her hands over her face as if the sight had blinded her. Suddenly she turned and ran off, wailing and cursing, with Chiseller nipping at her heels.

Rosa sat up and held out her hands to take the icon, and Calibur gave it to her. She gazed long at it, then at Calibur. She reached out a pale hand and touched the image of the child, and a tear ran down her cheek. She smiled a little, and the colour seemed to flow back into her face under the coating of ash. 'I think I want to go home now,' she whispered. 'Do you know the way, Calibur?' Before he could reply, she fell back in a faint. He caught her in his arms and bore her outside, still holding the icon, her white dress fluttering in the morning breeze, and none dared touch them.

But when they reached the gate, the guards demanded to hear from her own lips her wish to depart. 'For we cannot keep any novice here against their will, but she must confess her apostasy herself,' they said. And Rosa awoke and motioned to Calibur to set her on her feet. Drawing herself up to her full height, she looked up at the guards and said, 'I have come even to the gates of death, and know that beyond is rest which cannot be had in life. But for the sake of love, I choose life with my husband. For he has painted the Goddess, and in her face I see myself through his eyes, and I know that I am beautiful, and that I am loved, and that love is stronger than death. I choose to keep the womb, and call it blessed, even though I may never bear a child!'

And the anger of the guards blazed, and their third eyes opened, making Calibur reel back. But Rosa held up the icon, and it shone with a clear beauty, and the guards hid their faces, crying, 'The accursed witch whose womb brings life-in-death!' and they opened the gates and cried, 'Be gone, woman, in the name of the Void!' And they shook the dust off their sandals over her and cursed her. But as Calibur went to follow Rosa through the gate, they arrested him, and shut the gate on Rosa. She screamed, 'Give me back my husband!' But they replied, 'You, apostate, we were bound to release, but not this man. For he was found trespassing in the convent on the holiest day of the year. He must be punished by death!'

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12

The Wrath of Ainenia

Rosa cried out as one stricken to the heart, and pulled at the thorny gate and shook it until her hands bled, to no avail. Through the gaps in the cruel woven thorns of the gate, she saw the guards lead Calibur away to the other side of the enclosure, where the branches and suckering tendrils waved hungrily to receive their prey. And in a loud voice the superintendent proclaimed the sentence of death by enthornment, cursing him with the words Raka ralakké, which means 'One who is Anathema, the evil incarnation of the will-to-life, which causes endless rebirth and suffering.'

Rosa knew that once the thorns had fastened themselves into his flesh and injected the drugged sap, there would be no saving him; he would sink into a coma as the living vine slowly digested his flesh. And if a would-be rescuer were to somehow avoid being entangled by the threshing tendrils and cut the branches which held him fast, the sap still coursing through his veins, containing the same drug as the Apples of Forgetfulness, only far stronger, would torment him as it ran out; and eventually he would shrivel and die as a branch that is cut off from the vine.

So Rosa wept and prayed that someone might intervene, even as they prepared to throw Calibur into the vine, and its waving branches prepared to embrace him. Suddenly a shrill growling broke the silence. The little anklebiter, having chased the Phagzagira all the way back to her hut, had followed after Calibur, and now it nipped ferociously at the ankles of the guards as they held him fast. But another Aghmaath came from behind, and taking Chiseller by the scruff of the neck, hurled him into the thorns, which reached out their tendrils and held him fast, yelping pitifully until the poisoned sap overcame him, and he slept the sleep of death.

Now Calibur was pushed backwards into the waiting thorns, and his yells subsided as the tendrils injected their sap into his neck and arms and legs, until he too hung limp and lifeless in the thorns.

And Rosa saw it all, but could do nothing. Now she turned and flung herself into the ditch before the gates and begged for death to come to her. And it was still morning, and the birds were singing merrily in the trees, and a skylark hovered in the blue sky above. But dark thoughts came into her mind, woven by the guards above, as they probed and tormented her mind to turn it back to the Void.

Still Rosa's tears did not cease, and she held onto the icon Calibur had made her, and rocked back and forward in her grief for the child she would now never bear him. And her bitter tears flowed into the water at the bottom of the ditch, and mingled with the water. And the water trickled down the ditch into the pond, and thence into the enchanted stream which led down to Lake Avalon where Ainenia, the Lady of Aeden, bathed with her maidens.

Ainenia cried out in pain when she tasted the tears of Rosa in the clear waters of Lake Avalon, and she sank under the waters. There she saw a vision of Rosa sitting in the ditch outside the convent, and her beloved dying in the thorns within, and her heart was pierced with the grief that Rosa felt.

So she hurried by hidden paths and came to Rosa before the heat of the afternoon sun began to abate. 'Woman, why do you weep?' she asked.

'Because they have taken my beloved and cast him into the thorns from which there is no return,' said Rosa, marvelling at the Lady, who had appeared by the ditch as if out of thin air.

'What is it that you hold in your hands?' asked Ainenia.

'It is the icon of one called Ainenia, supposed to be the Lady of this whole land, and its protector. But as you see, she could not save me and my love.'

'I am Ainenia! And your tears have brought me here. Weep no more! For there is hope. If two lovers who know the truth of the marriage of Opposites unite in absolute love, even the thorns may yield to them.'

'But how will I go to him, since they have banished me and shut the gates against me, and shaken the very dust from their sandals against me?'

Ainenia's eyes blazed. 'We will see about that!' she cried. 'Hold up the icon!' and Rosa held it high, and the guards cried out in pain as the light of it entered their darkened minds, and they covered their faces. 'Open the gates!' said Ainenia, and they obeyed her, groping blindly for the draw-bolts, and the gates swung wide. Then Rosa walked with Ainenia to the other side where Calibur was enthorned, and none dared lay a hand on them. They reached the thorn hedge. Rosa gave Ainenia the icon with a smile then, unheeding, entered the thorns and walked into Calibur's arms as he hung there, bound fast by the creeping branches. Now the tendrils curled and wrapped about her as well, and Calibur and Rosa were locked together in a deadly bower of thorns. Rosa cried out to Ainenia in her agony as the tendrils injected her with the drugged sap, 'Lady, help us!'

Ainenia put down the icon - for she was the Lady and needed no image - and stretching out her hands she blessed the two lovers unto death as the tears streamed down her face. But she knew that there was a deeper magic at work, and she waited beneath the thorns.

Beyond the veil which separates the waking world from Faerie, and Faerie from the Hereafter, the soul of Rosa at last truly met with the soul of Calibur, and they faced each other at last in their true selves. Then they knew that they loved each other with absolute love, and that they were one forever. And Calibur saw that her heart and soul and her whole being glowed, being full of love for him and, in him, for Life. And the light that engulfed them spread into the thorns, and they returned to the waking world and the agony of the thorns to see a strange sight: a wave was passing through all the branches, and as it passed the tendrils grew rosebuds, and the sharp points shrank, and the tendrils that held the lovers uncoiled, and Rosa and Calibur embraced before the whole company that were now gathered about them, while all the roses began to bloom. Then Chiseller, who had also been released from the grip of the thorns, came waddling up and sat at their feet.

And many of the Sisters of Renunciation knelt before them and wept, and their first love of Life and the Goddess was rekindled, and they renounced the Void. Some said afterwards, and it entered the legends of Aeden, that they looked up and saw that the heart of the woman was like a rose glowing with living fire, and the man was holding aloft a fiery sword like Arcratine, the guardian sword of the sacred grove where the shining Heartstone crowned the Tree of Life.

But looking about to thank Ainenia, Rosa saw that she was gone, and that Calibur was bleeding and about to faint. As one waking from a glorious dream, she steadied him, speaking words of love and comfort to him. Then she picked up the icon and led him unhindered through the compound and out of the gates. And Chiseller followed, growling at any who tried to approach. They did not stop until they reached the pond where Calibur had camped.

Rosa took off her pale robe, and bathed and washed away the dust and ashes from her face, then bathed Calibur's wounds, and he winced with mingled pain and joy. Chiseller swam in circles around them as they embraced in the healing waters. Then Rosa looked into his eyes, and saw there no longer the abstracted, other-worldly gleam, but the love of the Goddess from whom come all worlds, whose cloak is the heavens, and whose womb is the Void. And in his eyes she saw also her own image as the manifestation of the Goddess. And looking into her eyes, Calibur saw the image of the One.

So it was that Calibur at last succeeded in his quest to win back his wife. And Rosa at last received her husband back, for whom she had waited, and despairing of whom she had despaired - for a while - of life itself.

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13

The Faerie Child

As the lovers journeyed together back to Avalon, accompanied by Chiseller, Rosa began to suffer the pangs of withdrawal from the apples of forgetfulness, and from all the teachings of false comfort in the Void, and she was sick and shivered even in the heat of the sun so that Calibur feared for her life, and by night she was assailed by demons that only she could see, and her womb cramped until she begged for the Phagzagira to come and take it from her, and then fumbled to find a knife or any sharp thing, and finding none, broke down and wept for the child she had never had.

And she heard the voices of the Aghmaath in her head constantly, and when she resisted them they tore at her mind so that Calibur feared for her sanity. For Calibur's sake she endured and did not turn back to the Void, but her despair grew even as she clung to life. For the thing which had grieved her if possible more than Calibur leaving her was still gnawing at her heart: she was barren. Yet she could not bring herself to say that this was the grief which was consuming her, and the icon seemed to mock her with its image of the child.

At last it became too hard for her to go on. Calibur left her under a tree by the banks of a stream, and went to get her some water to drink. Rosa idly felt the grass under her hand, but her mind wandered in darkness. Then she felt something small and waxy under her fingers. Plucking the white bud of the flower, she looked at it sadly as it lay in the palm of her hand. She was about to throw it away when it began to open before her eyes. It had five waxy petals, white as snow. It was a padmaësta, the hopeflower, which opens only under the light of the Blue Moon, or at the touch of one who is favoured by the Lady of Avalon.

Looking around, Rosa saw that many other padmaësta were flowering about her. She smiled, and looked up, her heart suddenly full of new hope. The tree was laden with blossoms. It was an appletree, sacred to the Goddess. Suddenly she felt her body flooded with light as she was swept up into Faerie. Then, as in a vision she saw Ainenia coming towards her from the stream, her long blue robes flowing in the spring breeze. 'Why do you doubt?' said the voice of Ainenia in her heart. 'Just as your heart was opened and blessed, so shall your womb be. The child you have long yearned for will enter it this very month when the apples set on the trees in the sacred groves of Avalon.'

Then Rosa, pierced with joy, cried out as if in pain. Calibur, returning from the stream, was afraid for her and ran to her side. 'Did you see Her?' whispered Rosa.

'See who?' asked Calibur, but she embraced him, and showering him with kisses, wept for joy. Then he knew that she was healed, and the sun warmed them as they lay together under the apple tree and the blossoms glowed like snow. And Chiseller sat and guarded their clothes, and bit the falling petals when the breeze swayed the tree.

As the sun rose on the third day they came to the blessed shore, and they walked in peace along the pebbly beach, and talked as they had not done since first they met, now delighting in the differences which once they had condemned in each other, each eager to explore the wonders of the other.

That night the Ferryman came, and bore them across the enchanted waters to the blessed isle, where they were married in the Great Marriage according to the custom of that land, and Ainenia and her maidens were there, and the celebrations lasted nine days and nights. That month was their honeymoon, and as the apples set in the sacred groves of Avalon, as the Lady had foretold, Rosa conceived. She glowed visibly now, Calibur thought, her heart and soul and body, and he marvelled that he had once been in despair at the thought that he should live out his life with her. Now it was as if he lived with the Goddess herself, and his restless heart was at home at last, with her, and everywhere they walked together they were in the centre of the labyrinth of Life. And they were taught the mysteries of walking

always in Faerie and creating the life they had come into the world to live, as naturally as the spider spins its web, shining in the morning dew.

One clear afternoon they climbed to the summit of Avalon with Chiseller, and there as they gazed out over the leagues to the High Plateau of the Tor Enyása where the Jewel of the Tree of Life shone in the sun, the Old Man of Avalon appeared, treading barefoot and silent on the warm smooth rock. His beard was white, and so were his robes. He carried a staff of thornwood, and there he stood smiling at them until they laughed out loud. He laughed too, for joy, and blessed them. 'Well done!' he beamed. 'I foresee that you will be the father and mother of great wonders in Logres, because you have chosen to live as one, and complete the Great Work! Now in you the Fifth Element grows, and by it you will create magical things.

'But now, I offer you the choice: you may stay in the World of Aeden where the Tree of Life still stands; or you may go back to your own land, where darkness and chaos reign, and seek to build there a foundation for Logres.'

And they chose to return to share on Earth the wisdom they had learned. 'My True destiny is to prepare the way for Logres to be founded in Britain, and only in Britain can we do this,' said Calibur. 'But now I do not wish to make any more swords. I have seen enough death, and wish only to nurture life. So I will stay at Rosa's side and care for her, and protect her from the accusations of the ignorant.'

'And we can rebuild the cottage, and raise ducks and grow roses again!' said Rosa.

'Of course!' laughed Calibur.

'Don't be forgetting that!' said the Old Man. 'For the greatest things exist also for the little, and even ducks, especially when raised by Rosa, have a special place in the Goddess's heart. But also, Rosa, expect a child, and prepare your heart to receive it. This fruit of your true love will be a child of the faerie isle, and will walk in Faerie.'

Then Rosa held Calibur's hand, and they knew they were blessed, and could bless, and would at last be fruitful in their union. And Rosa wept for joy. The Old Man took their hands and said to them, 'As you are descendants of past generations, so will you be ancestors of future ones, united with them in the great tapestry that grows ever richer. May you live long in great joy!

Then he gave Calibur a gift. It was a great emerald, one end facetted like a crystal, the other rounded like the hilt-end of a sword. Engraved in it were many runes. Calibur thought of the dream he had of the sword over the lake, and Gwynneth's words about the Sword of Truth needing an emerald, and he looked troubled as he thanked the old man and enquired as to the meaning of the runes, while Rosa restrained the anklebiter from grabbing the gem. The old man said, 'Take it, even if it is no more than a paperweight for your study, to remind you always of me, and of Avalon!' But there was a knowing twinkle in his eye.

'And now, farewell! But I will take the anklebiter. My cave will be home to him — if you took him with you he would only pine for his native world.'

They said goodbye to Chiseller, who was growling anxiously, and Rosa spoke motherly words of comfort to him as she hugged him and kissed his bristly head. Then the Old Man departed, taking Chiseller with him, and Calibur and Rosa watched the sunset together in mingled bliss and sadness.

On the next night of the Blue Moon, when Avalon passed close to Britain again, the Ferryman came to take them across one last time. Soon they found themselves sailing under a stormy sky off Land's End, and they beached in the cove where Calibur used to walk, and said farewell to the Ferryman, and went up onto the green springy turf of the headland, heading eastward to their old home.

When at last they arrived at the village, the icon which Calibur had painted for Rosa was admired for its unearthly beauty, and the way in which it held the essence both of Rosa and of Calibur, Man and Woman in perpetual blissful union, and of the eternal hope of the Child, and something else they could not put a name to. But the lovers knew that it was the image of Ainenia which shone through with the light of Aeden and the Tree of Life.

In the days that followed, Calibur sold the smithy to his former apprentice and used the money to rebuild the cottage, with the help of those who had burned it down, who were now full of praise for the pair. 'We don't know what got into us,' said one of them, and the others scratched their heads and agreed.

Soon after they had moved back into the cottage, Rosa gave birth to the child which she had conceived in Avalon. They named her Zurcíra, which means in the language of Aeden 'Bright eyes,' since she was a magical child and her eyes sparkled with the memory of Avalon.

And Calibur made Zircíra wonderful toys, and told her stories of Aeden when she was old enough. And he helped Rosa in the garden whenever he could, and made her a fox-proof and weasel-proof duck run, and they planted an orchard together, and later they had a boy, and he bit his sister on the ankle, so they named him Chiseller. Afterwards they had two more children, and they fed them all from the abundance of the garden and the orchard.

Calibur, having renounced the sword, became a stonemason and sculptor, and his son Chiseller was his apprentice. But in the long winter evenings while Rosa spun and wove, he would paint icons — though none was as magical as the one he made for Rosa in the canyon of Baz Apédnapath. It hung in their bedroom, and often when one of the children was afraid at night and came into their bed, Rosa would take it down and tell them the story of its making, and the child would fall asleep holding it fast.

Since they lived now in the power of the Fifth Element, none dared report them to the Church authorities, so blessed had they become, and full of power. And many in the surrounding villages were won over, and that part of Britain, now sunk beneath the waves, remained for many years a stronghold of love for the Goddess and Life, and even those who converted to the new religion of Rome still honoured the great Mother. So they lived out their lives in peace, and passed on their wisdom to their children, until the generation of the fall of Lyonesse, when it was lost in the great downfall, and the sea reclaimed it, and (it is said) the bells in the temples of the Goddess still ring in the depths beyond Land's End.

The icon of Ainênia was copied by many, and those copies were secretly copied by others in later times when the Goddess was forbidden, long after the original had been lost beneath the waves.

Then when Rome relented and the Madonna was allowed to be revered, one of those copies was the model for new images of the divine Mother and Child, and in those images was to be seen something of the magic of Aeden, and of Avalon, and of true love.

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14

The Vow

Only one thing remains to be told: how Calibur fulfilled the rest of his destiny, and so gave a great gift to the world.

One night he dreamed a dream which filled him with wonder. He awoke to a night-time festival, with fireworks flowering over a beautiful city of carven stone, and in the centre a gold-roofed castle with banners flying high over it. As he watched the spectacle, the fireworks died down, and the sky became inky black.

Suddenly, out of the blackness there came a whirlpool of stars which grew to fill the sky with frosty fields of light, as if the whole Milky Way had been netted and pulled close. He saw five forges below, and five wavy lines of moonlit smoke were rising from them in front of the stars. He called out to Rosa and she held his right hand and looked, marvelling: the sky was filled with a ghostly blue-and-gold image of a man and woman holding hands. They were translucent, so that the brighter stars shone through them; and interwoven ribbons of light played behind them. And he saw a shooting star near the horizon, then another, high up. Their eldest daughter Zurcíra was there and saw the vision also.

Even as he was wishing that Gwynneth too could see the image in the sky, she came up behind him, and held his left hand. And they all felt perfect peace, in the love and joy of the shared vision.

'It is a good omen,' said Rosa when she awoke in the morning and Calibur told her of his dream. 'It means that at last the time is at hand which you foresaw, that Gwynneth would somehow be part of your Destiny — though not as you once hoped! — and would help you create something wonderful and perfect, perhaps a book. But that is something I cannot help you with much. For remember, I am a simple gardener.' And she smiled at him knowingly, and he blushed to remember how he had spoken to her in those days before he had left to seek Truth on the mountaintop.

The very next day, Gwynneth came to the cottage, and they were overjoyed, but not surprised. Calibur was troubled, remembering his past feelings for her and her rejection of him, but Rosa embraced Gwynneth, and said, 'At last I have met the Lady who taught my stubborn old Calibur to honour the Goddess, and sent him back to find me and deliver me from the service of death!' When Gwynneth saw their love and happiness, and their little daughter, she wept. Rosa comforted her saying, 'Your time will come too. But for now, would you do us the honour of being faerie god-mother to Zurcíra?'

So Gwynneth blessed their daughter, and became her faerie godmother, and in later years Zurcíra would go and live with Gwynneth and serve her.

They showed her the garden and orchard and the ducks, and feasted with her in the cottage, and night fell, and they put Zurcíra to bed. Then they drank red wine together around the fire, and Gwynneth sang for them, and Rosa played the harp.

Then Calibur told Gwynneth about the dream, though his heart was hesitant to revisit matters to do with his former hopes.

She looked at him and said, 'Calibur, your destiny is still not complete. Make one more sword, that one you dreamed of long ago. You must forge it together, you and Rosa, for the Goddess. Then, when the time is right, it will be a Sword of Deliverance in the hand of the Man you saw in the sky. For I have seen a vision of those two also. And I will receive the Sword and keep it safe for the task it is to perform at a later time, known only to the Goddess.'

'But I have renounced the sword, which brings only death,' said Calibur.

'There will be a time when men will beat their swords into ploughshares,' replied Gwynneth, 'But it is not yet. Better a magical sword wielded by one who honours the Goddess, than that Britain should be over-run by the barbarians, whose god is the sword.'

'I do not want any more blood on my hands, now that I love all things with the unconditional love of the Goddess. I have made more than enough swords in my time! Even as we speak, some of the swords I made will be slashing flesh and bone, taking life given by the Goddess.'

'Yet as you well know, She gives life and takes it also. She allows the hunter his prey; how much more will she allow the good man to defend the innocent! This Sword will only give of its power to the good man; for its power will come from the quintessence, the male and female in balance; righteousness with mercy, power with love, taking with giving, creating with destroying.'

Calibur was trembling now; he felt the power of the Wouivre flowing up from the earth below him, and from the sky above. He felt that he knew how to make this terrible thing; yet he feared to do it. He felt a terrible tension, as if he were a lightning rod about to draw down the lightning.

'I hold you to your vow, to serve me unto the end of the Age!' said Gwynneth, and there was a tremor in the earth as she spoke. Suddenly the moon came out from behind the clouds, and the birds outside the window began to sing though it was the middle of the night. Rosa went to Calibur's side, and said, 'Do not be afraid! The Goddess and Truth are with us. Fulfil your vow, and I will stand by your side and help you!'

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15

The Shattered Sword

The next day Gwynneth returned to her home by the lake deep in the forests to the north, and Calibur and Rosa went into the village and asked Padrafer for the use of Calibur's old smithy by night. 'Of course, old friend and master,' replied Padrafer.

So in secret, night after night together Calibur and Rosa forged one last sword, the Sword which Calibur had seen in vision so many times and now at last understood.

Yet it was not a wholly new blade. For when he came back into his old smithy, Calibur remembered the fragments he had flung into a corner so long ago, and knew at last how he could reforge them. Going to the dusty corner, he brushed away the ashes and sweepings of the years. And there were the fragments, still bearing the marks of his youthful hammering, unrusted.

And he reforged the sword with Rosa's help, she hammering on the left side and he on the right. For it was now balanced, a magical sword of the Quintessence.

When the blade was finished they marvelled at its power; it shimmered with the power of Truth, as before when Calibur had first made it, but now it was unbreakable, being infused with Love.

Next they made the hilt out of wood from the Jewel-trees of Aeden, set with the great emerald from Avalon in the end of it. On the emerald were runes of power, and not even Calibur could read them, but the Old Man of Avalon had received them from the Makers, and would only say that they told of the mysteries of Atlantis and Logres and the Fifth Element, and the Beginning and End of all things, and the World that was, and is, and is to come. The rounded end Calibur made the hilt-end, just as he had seen, and the pointed crystal end he set into the tang so that the emerald and the steel were one. Then he bound the hilt with silver wire and gold, plaited into a marvellous pattern depicting the interwoven wouivres of earth and sky.

Then Rosa wove a scabbard of silk and strong leather to hold the sword, and Calibur inlaid it with silver and wrote on it the runes of the Five Elements.

When all this was done, Calibur took the sword and Rosa the scabbard, and in solemn ritual the two were joined, Male and Female, Sky and Earth, Truth and Love. Then, exhausted, they fell down and slept for a day and a night.

But in the night Calibur had a dream, and Gwynneth appeared to him, standing by her lake deep in the forests of the north, and his heart was strangely stirred. The next day, though still tired, he took the Sword and journeyed to the lake. Gwynneth rejoiced when she saw him, and embraced him warmly.

Then she asked, 'Is this at last your Sword of Truth?'

'No, I do not name it so, now that Rosa and I have

made it.'

'Then what is its name?'

'I call it only the sword of the Fifth Element, as it came of the union of two opposites: Rosa and myself. Now at last may I have peace, having fulfilled my destiny!' he sighed.

'Or have you?' said Gwynneth, her eyes shining with a new light, or one which Calibur had not seen before. 'Perhaps now our destinies may at last run together,' she was saying, looking deep into his eyes. Take the sword, and ride to victory over the enemy, and together let us found Logres!' She took his hands, and she had never appeared more beautiful to Calibur, and he imagined their bliss as they created a magical kingdom together. At last she desired to be with him as he had desired her! He felt the full power of her enchantment, by which once she had seduced the rich and the powerful.

But with a great effort he replied, 'Remember your own words of wisdom to me, long ago, when I wanted to stay with you always! And, even if Rosa would permit it, I have no desire now to wield this weapon. Into its making has gone all the strength of my youth. It must wait for another. And Rosa

is waiting.'

Gwynneth's warm smile turned to ice, and she let go of his hands abruptly. 'Coward!' he heard her say, but there was a roaring in his ears and her voice sounded strange and distant. Then he fainted, overcome with shock at her betrayal, and still exhausted from the forging of the Sword. He fell at her feet as one dead. Gwynneth took the Sword and ran along the lakeshore in grief and anger. 'I have borne no child; let this sword be my child!' she cried to the skies. The clouds were dark, and thunder growled in the hills about the lake.

As Calibur lay unconscious, he felt a strong hand raise him up. It was the Old Man of Avalon, pointing over the darkened mists of the lake. Calibur looked, and saw a vision of the future, and a beautiful castle, and all the glory of Logres that was to come, and he wept for joy at the sight.

And the Old Man said, 'Well done! Now you must guard the Sword, for the time is not yet for it to be wielded, nor will it be in your lifetime. So it is not even given to you to name it, only to watch over it.' And he showed Calibur what he must do, and faded into the mist.

Then Calibur awoke, and there was indeed a mist on the lake, and an anvil-stone stood by the lakeshore where he had seen the castle. Finding that the sword was gone, he was about to cry out, when he saw Gwynneth approaching along the lakeshore, weeping, bearing the Sword, still safe in its scabbard. She, too, had seen the Old Man. She handed the Sword back to him, and he forgave her for taking it, and for her harsh words. Then he told her what he must now do, and she bowed her head. 'As the Goddess wills,' she murmured.

Summoning all the magical power of the Quintessence, Calibur plunged the sword into the sacred anvil-stone, glowing white-hot as it entered, showering sparks and making the stone glow redly. Then sword and stone gradually cooled, to rest as one until a time that he would not live to see.

'The Sword of the God must not be separated from the Stone of the Goddess, except by one who is yet to come, who will serve the mystery of their true union,' he said.

'And it will be kept forever safe from the hands of those who seek power over others. And I, knowing all too well the seduction of power, will become the guardian of this treasure, and be known as the Lady of the Lake, and my descendants after me. But I will not live to see the day when it is drawn from the stone. So said the Old Man to me,' replied Gwynneth.

They spoke a little more, of things past and things to come, and how best to preserve the Sword and its scabbard, and all the wisdom they had learned. Then Calibur took his leave of the Lady of the Lake, and turned his face toward home, and Rosa.

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Epilogue

Gwynneth lived by the Lake for the rest of her days, and faithfully guarded the Sword in the stone, and the scabbard also. And she founded a college of the mysteries of the Goddess, to prepare for the time to come when the long-awaited Man and Woman would arise to claim the sword and scabbard and heal the land. And many came to her from all over Britain, so that the old wisdom was not lost, though the priests of the new faith spread their teachings throughout the land, and took over the sacred sites, and chopped down many of the sacred groves. But they never found the lake or the college. And it is said that the Old Man of Avalon came there and helped her for many years, preparing for the coming of the Pendragon. The Emerald Grail (of which many tales tell) was brought there also.

Gwynneth's successors guarded the Sword well while the years ran swiftly by and the world changed, until at last the awaited signs were given, and the Old Man of Avalon was seen again in the western woods. Then the Sword was given into the hand of a warrior who was worthy of the Goddess: Arthur the Pendragon, deliverer of the land we now know as Britain; founder of Logres, builder of Camelot. He drew the Sword from the stone, and so it became known as Excalibur, as it had been made by Calibur and also drawn from the Calibur, the sacred stone.

Though Camelot fell, and the Sword was reclaimed by the lake, they say Arthur was taken to Avalon in a sacred barge, and that the sword sleeps in the lake, until the reawakening of Logres. Merlin, they say, went into the earth, where he sleeps still, keeping the magic of Camelot alive in the Wouivre of Logres, until the awakening.

Calibur finished Anselm's Book of the Five Elements, and through it many found the Marriage of Opposites and the path back to the Goddess. In latter days it was deemed too subversive even to be placed on the Index of Forbidden Books, but was secretly hunted down, and through fire the original manuscript was lost to the world. But before that happened, some true and faithful copies were made, and one of these found its way to Camelot.

After the fall of Camelot, when the Sword was taken back into the depths of the sacred lake, some precious fragments of the Book passed into a stream of wisdom from which some still drink to this day. For the world of men has never been without a witness to those truths which would restore a balance seemingly lost forever.

So it was that long after the fall of Camelot, a new Quest was founded, in the face of great persecution, for a return to the Divine Feminine in the West. The nine knights who began the quest became known as the Templars. But that, as they say, is another Story.

The End

How to find out more about the lost World of Aeden, Ainenia, the Tree of Life, the Aghmaath, the Void, the Makers, the Templars, and much more...

The most pleasurable way we know is to get hold of The Apples of Aeden - volume one, The Girl and the Guardian -and begin reading.

What some early readers have said about Apples of Aeden:

"...this enchanting tale will help to shape the renaissance mythology for the new millennium.... one girl's transformation on her journey to save the soul of the universe... For the first time since reading The Lord of the Rings, my imagination's fancy soared with the landscapes created in my mind's eye..."Anna Harris (doctor. Admittedly biased – she is Peter's daughter)

"ABSOULTLY FABULOS!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean seriously, move aside J.K Rowling!"

Olivia Brandt, (then 11)

"Better than Harry Potter!...Some say, and I fully believe, that there are only three true stories in the universe and that the rest are just twisted retellings of the original tales. However... I have unearthed a fourth..."

Alice Bailey (then 14)

: "...I loved the experience of the read... I was whisked away into fantasy.... Apples of Aeden really is an epic. A huge rich story in the telling. Your writing is, as always, sublime...."

Rachel Taylor (Muse, writer; fan of Mists of Avalon and Richard Bach)

"I do find the thing as a whole very remarkable – the wealth of detail, the extent of the imagined world, the concept in its totality."

Christopher Goj (Editor, writer)

"Breathtaking, spellbinding, a lovely exciting read... thank you for re-awakening me to Faery."

\- Ian Leighton (Gardener)

More things by Peter Harris

For more on Aeden go to www.applesofaeden.wordpress.com

For my general blog which has links to some free posters and ebooks, and reflections of philosophy, architecture, art, book design and writing, the new economy and the Defence of the True West, go to:

www.wizardofeutopia.com

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