The Measure of Our Hearts

Note: All characters belong to the incomparable Lloyd Alexander. No profit is being made by this story other than the joy of writing it.

Thanks to Nightwing6, whose thoughtful review inspired me to make some changes to the version of this story I originally posted.

If you wish to read about how I came to write this fic, see the "Author's Note" which appears here as ch. 2.

"There is much to be known," said Adaon, "and above all much to be loved, be it the turn of the seasons or the shape of a river pebble. Indeed, the more we find to love, the more we add to the measure of our hearts."

--Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron

I. Adaon's Dream

As he slept images shuttled through his mind like patterns on the shifting web of a loom. Morgant's broken sword weeping blood, Ellidyr crying out as a beast gripped his shoulders, Taran's tear-streaked face—all gave way, as dawn stealthily approached, to a vision of himself stretched on the ground in a transcendently beautiful place. It was a forest glade, and he lay at the foot of a tree surrounded by flowers of brilliant, unearthly hues that, mysteriously, sprang from stones. Within the glade's magic circle, spring burgeoned and birds sang, but outside, as if an invisible line had been drawn, snow blew over bare branches rattling like bones. Close as it was to the site of his own felicity, this bleak scene did not distress him; rather, he felt utterly at peace, as if there were no boundaries between himself and the joyous nature around him. Glancing at his hands, he saw young leaves shooting from his fingers to send green tendrils into the earth. Only sometimes did he hear, over the voice of the wind at the edge of the glade, a faint, heartfelt keening like the sound of human sorrow.

II. Taliesin

Dawn brightened the autumn day on which Prince Gwydion and a carefully chosen band left Caer Dallben, home of the great enchanter, to destroy the cauldron used by Arawn of Annuvin to create deathless slaves from the bodies of fallen warriors. As his son Adaon dreamed in a chamber at Caer Dallben before leaving on this mission, Taliesin, Chief Bard of Prydain, awoke in his bed to the north in the castle of Caer Dathyl. Stronghold of the current descendents of the House of Don—Prince Gwydion and the High King Math—Caer Dathyl had been Taliesin's home for many years, and it was here that he had raised his only child. Cheerful and vigorous despite his age, Taliesin was not used to waking, as he did now, with the traces of tears on his face. The dream that had caused this mysterious grief dissolved in the reddening light, leaving him only with the memory of stretching his arms, with unutterable longing, to a figure whose face he could not see. Could it have been his long-dead wife? She had died in childbirth when Adaon was only four, and her newborn baby—a daughter—died with her. In the silent stretches of the night his wife still came to Taliesin, sometimes a warm, embodied shape he could touch, other times an elusive shadow who faded as he moved to embrace her. Somehow, though, he felt that the figure in last night's dream had not been his wife. Perhaps it was the daughter he had never known, the infant whom he had last seen nestled pale as a snowdrop in his dead wife's arms; perhaps he had had a fleeting vision of the young woman she might have become had she lived.

Or—Taliesin could not repress a shudder—could the figure have been Adaon? Let it not be Adaon, he prayed. His son had gone to battle before, but there was no disguising the disquiet that Taliesin felt about this venture, an uneasiness that seeped into his very bones. More than many, he understood the urgency of fighting Arawn, lord of the land of death, who sought ever more forcibly to conquer the living. Yet Taliesin could not help wishing that his son, who after all was soon to be wed, were not exposed to such danger. And Adaon, he thought desperately, was all the family he had. Between father and son was a bond strengthened by their mutual need after the death of Adaon's mother. In the aftermath of their grief, the learned man and the small boy had clung together like bewildered travellers who had survived the shipwreck of all that was dear to them. As he had grown into a tall, black-haired man with his father's grey eyes, Adaon had given Taliesin countless causes for pride, not only for his bravery in battle but, more importantly, for his love of peace, knowledge, and healing. Like Taliesin and Prince Gwydion, Adaon hated the squandering of human life so endemic to his culture. It was not unusual for kings of small cantrevs to spill blood in petty squabbles, careless of the wreck of farmers' fields and the ravaging of communities. Loyal to the House of Don, which had long striven to limit the carnage, Adaon only took up arms against the High King's enemies, chief of whom was Arawn, lord of the Land of Death and incarnation of the sterile greed that causes human strife.

Taliesin knew little about this mission except that it included a strike against the ever-encroaching power of Annuvin. Despite his anxiety, there was nothing Taliesin could do to stop Adaon from going. In all conscience, he could not hold his son back when others sacrificed those dear to them, not that Adaon would stomach such interference anyway. Taliesin smiled as he recalled his son's stubborn streak. Adaon had always been eager to please his father, but there was a quiet rebellion in his insistence on waiting, despite his father's urging, to be initiated as a bard. Time and again Taliesin had patiently pointed out that Adaon, who had inhaled the learning in which he had been steeped from boyhood, was more than qualified to become a bard. A dazzlingly learned prodigy scarce out of his teens, Adaon had refused to accept the honor, and he had continued to refuse as a young man who had travelled farther and mastered more skills—fishing, farming, smithing, weaving, pottery, the healing arts—than many thrice his age. Taliesin sometimes wondered if Adaon, like the children of other famous parents, was afraid of becoming just a younger version of his father. Yet he sensed his son's decisions were driven by more than adolescent yearning for a distinct identity. Apparently, Adaon was an even greater perfectionist than his father, who had become the sagest scholar and most talented musician of his age. As yet, Adaon simply felt unworthy to join the ranks of the bards, and Taliesin, much as he winced at such excruciatingly high standards, could not help but respect and admire them. And so, whenever he had lovingly pestered his son to seek initiation—as he had done yet again before Adaon set off on this mission—he did so knowing that his son realized his father's words did not mean that Adaon was wanting in his eyes, but rather the opposite, that, whatever Adaon's expectations of himself, his father thought he had more than met them. And so they went through the same dance, Taliesin bringing up the bardic exams, Adaon respectfully, ever so firmly, and with a lurking smile trotting out the usual objections to taking them anytime soon. Taliesin wondered what would happen on the day he invited Adaon to consider initiation and his son finally agreed. Adaon would probably roar with laughter at the flabbergasted look on his father's face. And yet, here again Taliesin felt his chest tighten as he hoped there would be a future for his son. In the brightening morning he still felt the shadow left by his dream and the figure slipping from his yearning grasp.

III. Arianllyn

In the same dawn in which Adaon and Taliesin woke from their dreams, Arianllyn, Adaon's betrothed, tossed uneasily in the bed where she had lain, only occasionally dozing, throughout an endless night. She had had no troubling dreams—she had not slept enough to dream—but surely this was natural when one's husband-to-be had left several days ago to fight Arawn. No fragile damsel waving farewell with a tear-soaked handkerchief, Arianllyn had been her usual wry self the night before Adaon's departure. "It's always this way, isn't it," she'd said, "the women remain behind while the men go off to get hurt. The heroes! If only they knew what trouble they cause!" Adaon knew her well enough not to be offended by any of this. She was, for one thing, only expressing a singularly troubling truth, that women were the ones who had to mop up the mess of a male-dominated warrior culture. And, anyway, he knew her scolding words were charged with fierce anxiety about his safety.

He'd looked at her, that night before he rode to Caer Dallben, with a rush of affection for her tartness and toughness, her gleaming auburn hair and ironical green eyes. Like his father, Adaon had chosen to wed an intellectual woman. Adaon's mother had been renowned for her wisdom and learning, and her skill at the harp had rivalled her husband's. Women could become bards in Prydain, but few were educated enough to choose this option; moreover, it was considered shocking for a woman to roam the countryside as a travelling harper. Yet neither obstacles nor prejudices had deterred Cerys Daughter of Ceindeg. She had achieved initiation, and to the horror of almost everyone who knew, even dressed as a boy to try the life of a wandering bard. Significantly, Taliesin had not been among those who disapproved of this plucky unconventionality. Rather, he had rejoiced that, on the threshold of old age, he had finally found a fit partner in this glorious young woman. Despite the difference in their years, theirs had been a lively marriage of well-matched minds and passionate, adoring hearts. Adaon once told Arianllyn that he had gathered his father suffered guilt as well as grief at his wife's death, that Taliesin felt responsible for miring a magnificent spirit in the fate of countless women defeated by their role as childbearers. Recalling this as she rose from her sleepless night, Arianllyn wished she could assuage Taliesin's guilt. Though she had as yet found no opening to bring up so painful and personal a topic, she longed to tell her father-in-law-to-be that Cerys had been no victim but had, rather, with open eyes taken the risk that went along with giving, and receiving, the gift of love. Despite her own trepidation at the dangers of childbirth, Arianllyn could not imagine refusing to bear Adaon's children. Reminded by this thought of the process of begetting children, she felt a faint blush mantle her cheeks and smiled more smugly than a cat contemplating a bowlful of cream.

She had met Adaon when both were teenagers. Living in a northern kingdom not far from Caer Dathyl, Arianllyn and her widowed mother Arianwen hailed from an ancient, noble family of bards, seers, and enchanters. Over time, the line became depopulated, leaving at length only mother and daughter to rattle around a shabby manor packed with books and heirlooms. Against this ricketty backdrop Arianwen, a scholar herself, gave her only child a formidable education. The girl excelled not only at music and lore but at the loom, weaving, from a precocious age, rainbow-streaked creations of surpassing beauty. When she was around fourteen her mother travelled to Caer Dathyl, as she had discovered that she and Taliesin each possessed rare volumes the other wanted to examine. Arriving at the castle, Arianllyn explored the gardens behind Taliesin's chambers while Arianwen and the Chief Bard enthusiastically compared crumbling tomes. As she walked through peaceful rows of flowers, mentally transforming them into the pattern for a tapestry, she spotted, lying on his stomach before her on the grass, a black-haired youth absorbed in a book. He was so immersed that he didn't notice her approach. Later, when she'd become familiar with his acuity of eye and ear, Arianllyn recognized in this obliviousness to his surroundings proof of impressive powers of concentration. At the time, hesitant to disturb him, Arianllyn shyly asked what he was reading. He had started and then laughed at his own surprise, leaping to his feet to show her a treatise crammed with details about plant and animal life in forests. Given that both were at an awkward age when it came to the opposite sex, they had chatted with remarkable unselfconsciousness. Over the next few years, Adaon and Arianllyn continued to enjoy each other's company on the occasions when their parents got together for bookish conversation. The two young people even cherished hopes that the friendship of their widowed parents would blossom into romance, shrugging resignedly when their hopes came to naught. Of course, even as the teenagers imagined their parents a stylish elder couple, the objects of this fantasy were on the lookout for signs that their talented offspring were falling in love. Perhaps it was not simply the hope of being less lonely herself that caused Arianwen finally to shut up the drafty family seat and relocate to Caer Dathyl, which, more a city than a castle, housed varied, teeming communities of warriors, artisans, nobles, and bards.

Yet even as Arianllyn, now on the cusp of adulthood, migrated to Caer Dathyl, Adaon was about to leave it to satisfy an apparently limitless lust for seeing and experiencing new things. Before he could go, however, a corrupt local king, seduced by Arawn's promises of greater power, invaded a nearby cantrev aided by Huntsmen of Annuvin, criminal thugs who swore allegiance to Arawn in return for endless opportunities to kill, rape, and maim. Warriors from Caer Dathyl, including Adaon, who had put off his own voyage to volunteer, hastily rode off to prevent the Huntsmen from doing their worst. The mission was particularly dangerous, as Huntsmen had the nasty habit of gaining communal strength when one of their number was slain. Just beginning to realize that her feelings for Adaon went beyond friendship, Arianllyn, sick with worry, watched him ride off and wondered if he would come back. Fortunately Adaon returned safe but oddly subdued, and Arianllyn's heart ached as she realized that he disliked being a warrior even though he was, by all accounts, a very good one. Shortly afterward he left Caer Dathyl for the first of several stints wandering the length of Prydain, mastering different trades and sharing the lives of the most humble inhabitants. Arianllyn privately attributed the self-denial and hardship of these ventures not only to Adaon's love of learning but to a desire to atone for having, even in the most justifiable of causes, taken up the sword. As Arawn became increasingly aggressive in his strikes against the Sons of Don, Adaon, despite his reluctance to shed blood, periodically interrupted his travels to fight, gaining a reputation for courage that mattered far less to him than his skill with healing herbs. Arianllyn even suspected that Adaon deferred bardic initiation because, by honing on his travels his talents of creation, not destruction, he strove to prove to himself beyond all doubt that he was an ally of the forces of life rather than those of death.

And that was what she cherished most about him: his unquenchable wonder at the beauty of the world and his belief in the power of love to transcend evil. When she'd finally acknowledged the intensity of her own love for him, she'd characteristically thrown feminine propriety to the winds and went to tell him. She narrowly beat him to it, as she found him bursting with a passion for her that, he feared, was as yet unrequited. Arianllyn soon convinced him he'd been very silly to think she hadn't longed for him the whole time, and so, to their parents' infinite and slightly smug delight, they were betrothed. Before the wedding, both worked hard to finish self-imposed apprenticeships, Adaon learning ever more skills on his travels, Arianllyn achieving the rank of master weaver and completing the bulk of her studying for her own bardic exams. Now, finally, they were on the verge of marrying, though predictably first Adaon was summoned on some sort of mission by Prince Gwydion. Neither Adaon nor Arianllyn knew exactly what task Gwydion had in mind, but both hoped that, even though it probably involved Arawn, it could be accomplished reasonably quickly. As she sped Adaon on his reluctant way, Arianllyn felt a foreboding more pronounced than her usual he's-off-to-battle jitters, though she tried to blame this on pre-nuptial nerves.

On this journey Adaon bore an object of great magical power which Arianllyn had given him the previous year. Among the treasures of lore and learning she and her mother had inherited was a marvelous thing, a brooch fashioned by Menwy, first of the bards. It wasn't much to look at—merely an iron oval engraved with three arrows symbolizing the bardic motto of knowledge, truth, and love. Yet whenever she picked it up Arianllyn could feel thrills racing to her very fingertips. Family tradition had it that this brooch—reputed to endow its wearer with seer-like vision—was to be bestowed upon the one in each generation deemed worthiest of it. But for some time the custom had fallen into disuse, and here were Arianllyn and her mother, the last of their ancient line, in charge of one of the treasures of Prydain that had not, like so many others, been stolen by Arawn. Arianwen thought her daughter should wear the brooch—"after all, one needn't be a man to use it"—but Arianllyn, while having no qualms about subverting male dominance, was reluctant to lay claim to such potent enchantment. Then last year she had had the revelation—natural, and yet momentous—that the only person she knew who was truly worthy of the brooch was Adaon. She yearned to celebrate the otherwise unspeakable depth of her love for him, and so with her mother's consent had given him the brooch on his birthday. His eyes had widened when she happily placed the clasp in his hand. He was torn between amazed joy and reluctance to accept something so very valuable, for with his encyclopedic knowledge he immediately recognized what it was. Like her mother he pointed out she could wear it herself, but she told him that research of the brooch's history had revealed its magic only worked if it was given willingly from one person to another. "I can't give it to myself," she said, "but I can give it to you, and I can't imagine anyone who has better earned it." And thus Adaon had worn the iron ornament and discovered, like its previous owners, that it gave the wearer prophetic dreams and heightened, uncanny discernment. Ironically, the brooch could best perform these wonders if owned by someone who already possessed wisdom beyond the ordinary. After accepting Arianllyn's gift, Adaon remained his usual self, and she sensed that the clasp merely enhanced his own abilities rather than transforming him into someone else, which was a good thing as she had no desire for him to be anyone other than who he was.

So, her betrothed off to Caer Dallben, here she was perched on the battlements of Caer Dathyl, whither she had gone after getting dressed, and wishing desperately that Adaon were beside her to view the ever-brightening dawn. She yearned to banish the nagging disquiet tugging at her heartstrings—surely it was worse than the usual worry?—but guessed she'd have to live with it while stuck in this exasperating feminine state of waiting for her lover to return. Sighing, she rose to start the day's weaving, hoping that her active fingers would distract her. Like Adaon, she would far rather nourish thoughts of life, of its beauty and creativity, than be waylaid by fears of death.

IV. Destiny

Some days later, in the Forest of Idris to the south of Prydain, a weary band paused after riding all night to escape pursuing Huntsmen. They were a slightly ragtag bunch: the strange, scruffy creature Gurgi; the bard-king Fflewddur Fflam, harp jogging on his shoulder; the stumpy dwarf Doli; red-haired Princess Eilonwy; Taran Assistant Pig-keeper; scowling, arrogant Prince Ellidyr; and Adaon leading them all on his bay mare Lluagor. After leaving the waypost of Gwystyl of the Fair Folk the previous evening, they had shifted their route from the path to Caer Cadarn, stronghold of King Smoit, to the Marshes of Morva, where, as they'd just found out, the cauldron had ended up after mysteriously vanishing from Annuvin. Needled by Ellidyr, who had grandiloquently announced his intention of seeking the cauldron on his own, Taran insisted they bypass Caer Cadarn, where they were supposed to await Gwydion's new orders, and proceed straight to the Marshes. When Eilonwy had pointedly reminded Taran and Ellidyr that they weren't the ones in command, Adaon, who was, had refused to make the final decision and inexplicably allowed Taran to do so instead. And thus—with loudly voiced disgust from Doli—they were off to Morva, Adaon obstinately silent about his reason for abdicating authority. There was no way he could tell them, though. Of the sleep-deprived group plodding on their horses, Adaon alone knew the destination to which he was heading. Having decoded the dream he'd had before leaving Caer Dallben, he realized that, if the tasks of destroying the cauldron—and, eventually, the conquest of Arawn himself—were to be accomplished, the glade of his dream must all too soon be his grave. After a bitter, albeit mercifully brief, struggle with the temptation to return safely to Caer Cadarn, he'd managed to make peace with the imminent severance of the thread of his young life. Yet, bound as he was still to the world by filaments of love and desire, the morning sights—the rosy dawn, green moss girdling a tree, the orange curve of an autumn leaf—smote him with their beauty, and seemed moreover the backdrop for an even dearer sight, Arianllyn's face, which like these other glories he would soon be unable to see again. Sharpened by this preternatural, near-death sensitivity to his surroundings—an awareness even greater than that vouchsafed him by the brooch—he felt like someone falling from a great height, the scenes of his life unfurling in seconds like slow-dragging years before he hit the ground. Filled with pride and even a strange joy that he had passed the test required of him, he still could not stifle some impatience at his now limbo-like, oddly posthumous existence, a yearning for it finally to end and bring him the utter peace of the glade in his dream.

Since there was as yet no sign of the Huntsmen, after eating a quick meal they stopped in the morning to rest. Having praised Taran for patiently handling a confrontation with Ellidyr—who'd been livid since Taran had decided to seek the cauldron—Adaon was relieved when the assistant pig-keeper agreed to accept Adaon's possessions, including the brooch, should ill befall him. Adaon had grown very fond of Taran in the few days in which he had known him, and moreover saw in the young man a special promise that made him unusually worthy of wearing the brooch. Noting Taran's horror at the mere mention of disaster for Adaon, he hoped that, if Taran eventually realized the truth—that he had, unwittingly, doomed his friend by going to Morva—he would not be overwhelmed with guilt. Though rash and prompted by a childish response to Ellidyr's taunts, Taran's decision to seek the cauldron had, perversely, been an eminently logical one. Taran, however, had been obviously troubled by Adaon's passive behavior at the waypost, and during the night's ride had hesitantly asked his friend to tell him what he had dreamed about himself before leaving Caer Dallben. For an instant Adaon thought to evade the question. It was not like him, however, to lie or waffle, and he hoped that merely describing the dream would not unlock the mystery to which only he knew the solution. Fortunately, Taran hadn't appeared to figure things out, though he remained worried and uncertain. From her seat behind Taran on his mount Melynlas, Eilonwy had regarded Adaon searchingly as he related his dream, and for a moment Adaon feared the sharp-witted princess would understand. Yet, though like Taran still uneasy, she too seemed none the wiser.

Now, lying down with the others after the morning's meal, Adaon wondered if, exhausted as he was, he could sleep knowing that death's endless sleep awaited him. Yet he dropped into slumber as into a well, a slumber that, despite the brooch still at his collar, was blessedly dreamless. Only just before Taran woke them, crying that Ellidyr had stolen off on his own, did Adaon swim closer to the surface of consciousness. In a vision of extraordinary clarity, he saw the two people dearest to him, Taliesin and Arianllyn, tears streaming down their faces and arms outstretched in futile yearning. He himself seemed to be melting into darkness, but before he vanished he held out his own arms and murmured Forgive me—forgive me, and farewell. He had feared their anger at his choice to suffer death rather than return to them, but was relieved to see on their faces, in addition to their boundless pain, an equally boundless love. Consoled, he awoke to face his destiny, the Huntsman's dagger that within an hour would pierce his breast.

V. Knowledge, Truth, and Love

They knew. They knew, even before Gwydion bore the news to Caer Dathyl. They had no brooch with which to foretell the future, but somehow they were certain that Adaon would not return.

In the days after Adaon left the castle, Taliesin and Arianllyn found themselves seeking each other's company without properly admitting why. Much as Arianllyn loved her mother and friends, she soon discovered that despite—more likely, because—of their attempts at reassurance she could not bear to be near anyone but Taliesin. At first she thought this might be because the old man reminded her of his son, whom he strongly resembled. Yet she soon realized a new bond was forged between Taliesin and herself as both, normally unflinchingly brave and honest people, were struck dumb by escalating dread. They sat quietly in Taliesin's chambers, ostensibly reading or sometimes, in Arianllyn's case, embroidering, each aware that the other was encased in the growing certainty of impending grief. One day, however, Taliesin put his harp to his shoulder, gently bending his white head to the instrument. His wordless song was one of the most heartrending and beautiful things Arianllyn had ever heard. Charged with grief, the music stirred in her a sense of unbearable loss but also an elusive feeling she could only describe, impossibly, as hope. When he finished playing Taliesin laid the harp on a table and came toward her, looking her in the eyes for the first time in days. He knelt beside her chair and placed his hand on her shoulder. She burst into tears, and, when she was finally able to control herself, saw that he, too, was struggling to maintain his composure.

"We can't give up yet, Arianllyn. We don't know for sure."

"I feel it," she said, fervently. "I'd love—beyond anything!—to be wrong, but I can't see how. I've never felt like this before—it goes beyond ordinary fear."

"I feel it too," he said simply. "But, possibly, we are wrong. Even if"—his voice shook slightly—"we are right we must not give up hope."

"How?" she asked, bewildered. "If we're right what hope is left?"

"There is always hope," he said, though the heaviness of his tone belied his words. As if realizing this, he explained further. "Even in death and grief there is hope. As long as there is love there is hope. I'm not even sure I can say what the hope is for, but without it, those of us left behind could not go on living."

He got to his feet stiffly, and she realized that he seemed to have aged years in a few days. Again, there was a tacit understanding between them, that they could not speak further just yet, that the blow actually had to fall before they could puzzle out the meaning of hope amidst despair. And so they continued to wait.

They did not have to wait long. The next day, as everyone gathered for the midday meal in the Great Hall, snatches of news reached the castle that Gwydion was even now returning to Caer Dathyl, that the Black Cauldron had been destroyed, that Morgant of Madoc had turned traitor but been slain before he could use the stolen crochan for his own ends. As yet, there was no word of Adaon. Scarcely sparing a thought for anything they had just heard, Arianllyn and Taliesin rose silently and ascended the castle battlements. Looking down, they could see, at a distance, a single horseman on a white horse, Gwydion's mount Melyngar, but no black-haired companion on a bay mare rode beside the prince. Taliesin's lips were ashen and Arianllyn's knees trembled, but they managed to get down the stairs and into the courtyard as Gwydion cantered in. There were many others waiting to cheer Gwydion's approach, but, having noticed them, the Prince of Don seemed only to see Arianllyn and Taliesin. Quickly dismounting, he came towards them. If they hadn't been so utterly certain, if they had been able to fool themselves into believing that Adaon was for some reason coming back at a later date, the look on Gwydion's face would have disabused them at once. Embracing them with tears in his eyes, Gwydion carefully steered them out of the murmuring crowd into his own chambers. Later there wasn't much Arianllyn could remember of what followed. Everything seemed to happen in slow motion; words reached her ears long after being spoken, she only saw through a dim mist, her voice wasn't working the way it was supposed to. At first Gwydion had not tried to tell them any details of what had happened, but had quietly ensured they were surrounded by—blessedly wordless—love and care.

Once full consciousness returned, of course things got much worse, just as the initial numbness when a limb is lopped off is succeeded by screaming pain. Worse even than pain was knowledge, for Arianllyn discovered her own contribution to the tragedy. Gently telling Taliesin and Arianllyn everything he knew about Adaon's death—information gleaned from both Taran and Fflewddur—Gwydion did not spare Arianllyn the knowledge that, because of the brooch she had given him, Adaon had had warning of his fate, and had chosen not to evade it. Gwydion must have realized that it was necessary for her to deal with this hideous irony in order, finally, to heal, but at first it was a blow that felled her. But when she had cried out that it was her fault, that maybe if Adaon hadn't known he would have chosen not to go to Morva, Taliesin had gently, tearfully, but with unmistakable authority cut in. Yes, he had said, Adaon had had a choice—one always had choice—yet his choice came from a recognition of his own destiny, which had not been determined by the brooch but only illumined by it. There were metaphysical depths here that no one, Arianllyn least of all, was able at that point to fathom—was there really such a thing as destiny if one could sidestep it?—but Taliesin somehow persuaded her that guilt was an impossible indulgence, and that she had to accept her part in the death of a person for whom she would gladly have given her own life.

And so Arianllyn and Taliesin entered the land of grief, a continent that those who voyage to it can never escape. Once one beaches on those shores other continents are visible only from a great distance, so there never seems to have been a time when one was not an inhabitant of the realm of unhappy endings. They could never think now of Adaon's life without coupling it with his death, and they could never go back before his death and cause it not to happen. All along, unknown to them, this untimely end had been the goal toward which his brilliant existence had tended.

Finally, around a month after Gwydion's return, Arianllyn knocked on the door to Taliesin's study and, having entered, sank into a chair in front of the table where the old man sat, painstakingly restringing a harp. When he glanced up at her questioningly, she got right to the point.

"There's this giant hole in my heart that won't close, that I feel bleeding endlessly. I'm not about to kill myself, but I don't see how I can ever truly live again. Please"—she added quickly—"don't tell me time heals all wounds, or at least causes scar tissue to form. Don't tell me that Adaon would have wanted me eventually to be happy with someone else, and that I have to soldier on until that happens. Some people have dared to do that, and all I can say is they're lucky they're not dead too."

Taliesin quirked an eyebrow, and to her astonishment both began to laugh. "I never thought I could laugh again," she said wonderingly. "I'm afraid to think it," she mused. "I can't stand the pain, but it's all I have left of him. If the pain were to fade, it would be because I'm thinking of him less often, and if I do that I'll lose him all over again, which really would be unbearable."

Taliesin sighed. "I cannot claim time heals all wounds, not least because I fear your just wrath, my dear. There are" he said simply, "wounds that never heal. And yet, one cannot try to prevent their healing."

"But you just said they never heal anyway."

"Well, they don't ever heal completely. And, yes, even without indulging grief some wounds remain gaping holes. We have to learn to live with an emptiness that can never be filled. And, if you remember our conversation of several weeks ago, somehow, even with these holes in our heart, we have to keep hoping though all hope is gone."

She shook her head. "I won't pretend to guess how I can do that. And if you remember, I asked you how one could cling to hope when we know he's dead. That's like denying the truth."

"I am not speaking," corrected Taliesin gently, "of deluding ourselves with hope that Adaon is not dead. Nor am I asking us to assume our wounds will disappear. I am only speaking of the hope that we can, even with damaged hearts, keep loving. It is better," he continued, his voice almost a whisper, "to have a hole in one's heart than not to have a heart at all—never to have allowed oneself the risk of having loved. We have lost Adaon, but we cannot lose our pride that we loved him—that we had the privilege of loving him, while he was with us on this earth."

As he spoke, Taliesin's voice grew stronger, and despite the tears in his eyes remained steady.

When Arianllyn could steady her own voice, she said quietly, "Adaon once told me he feared you felt guilty about his mother's death. Forgive me for asking, but is that true?"

"You do not offend me," Taliesin told her. "Yes, I was stricken with remorse by my wife's death, as you were by Adaon's. In her case, I felt I was the cause of her dying like that—bearing our child."

"Forgive me again," Arianllyn pointed out, "but I believe it takes two people to beget a child."

Taliesin gave the ghost of a chuckle. "I have heard that as well."

"But you see," Arianllyn persisted, "after Adaon told me I always wanted to tell you that your wife, being who she was, could never be someone who was done to but had to be someone who did. What I meant to say to you, in other words, is the same thing you just said to me, about accepting the risk. Your wife took the risk of loving with open eyes, and that is the only way to love—to be willing to suffer unbearable pain rather than refuse to feel. Now, finally, I have tested the truth of the counsel I never dared give."

They smiled at each other. Arianllyn stood, then leaned down and gave Taliesin a swift hug. "I could not wed your son," she said, "but I will always be your daughter."

She walked to the door, out of the chamber, and through the castle halls to her room. Entering, she went to the abandoned loom near the window and resolutely sat down. From the wools in her basket she chose brilliant skeins that reminded her of Adaon: deep purple, vital green, luminous blue, sunflooded yellow. Then, threading her loom and taking a deep breath, she began to weave.