Mathonwy

Mathonwy was born on the equinox, nine months to the day after her conception on Midsummer's night. Her mother liked to tease that her father was, in truth, a golden-eyed man who had walked out of the sun-coloured shadows just as that flame- shaded ball fell beyond the horizon.

Everyone knew quite well that it was a fanciful story, and that the girl's true father was the tall, stern, grey-eyed man who spoke as the voice of their village. She was entirely like him, they said, Athena-eyed and rare to smile, even as a small child.

When she was five years old, Mathonwy looked into a fire, and, in her clear, steady voice, spoke of the burning of the village by outsiders.

On Sanheim, it came to pass. Christians came, to convert or to kill, and very few escaped the iron blades. A night of worship turned to one of blood. The little grey-eyed girl walked through the carnage unseen, the fires of the night reflected in her eyes as swords swung above her and around her, discontent with so small a morsel as she.

Unhurriedly, she went into the Druids' Wood, and watched her village die. In the morning, someone placed a hand on her shoulder, and she looked up into the eyes of the man who was to be her teacher.

His name was Brion, and he took the little girl away and explained to her she had a gift, a great gift that might be used to help her people. Druid's magic, he called it, that thing that stirred the blood and called up sorcery out of the will of a man. He could teach her, if she would learn.

She looked into his soul with her clear grey eyes, and read the truth there. She nodded, and walked away from him, to find an oak tree. There she sat, and thought very hard about what had happened.

Three days later she returned to Brion, and asked if her gift might prevent the kind of slaughter that had been visited on her home. He said yes, and she began her study.

Years passed. Mathonwy grew rapidly, as children will. Her gifts grew with her; in time, the ability that Brion called precognative, the seeing, could be manifested nearly at will. Talents he called sorcery came to her fingertips: the skill of healing, and the ability to pull up cloaking fogs from the cool Irish soil.

She became a woman at thirteen, and to her horror, those more refined skills, especially the seeing, changed as her body changed. Where she had been able to call the Seeing to her at a moment's need, she no longer could, and where the visions had been clear, they now showed paths most likely, rather than future certain.

She went to Brion with these pains, her new uncertainty, and he chuckled, and knelt before her. Even so, his head came nearly to her shoulder; she was small yet, and the wizard large, his hands swallowing hers. Do not fear, he instructed her, all of our powers change throughout our lives. This, the wakening of the body, is the first, and perhaps the most difficult. You will adapt, and you will find other compensations for the skills lost.

Skeptically, she continued her study, and within months found Brion right. The path of the moon affected her Scrying talent; when her blood came, she could predict most certainly the future that would come to be, and in the wane of the moon, her ability to heal was stronger. The smaller talents, the making of the fogs and the calling of animals, remained steady throughout.

On her fifteenth naming-day, just after midnight, Mathonwy woke abruptly, feeling a call to the west. Without waking her mentor, she packed a small bag, and, carrying a water skin, set off to the furthest shore of her island home.

There, in a small town, she paid coin to be brought out into the sea, and the men rowing the boat returned in quiet awe, speaking of the weather-eyed witch who commanded the fog from the seas. They left her, they said, on the islands, barren and cold as they were, and were to return for her in a fortnight's time; the seas, she promised, would be clear.

For fourteen days, the young woman fasted, and learned what the land and sea would teach her. The sea taught her of selkies, the shape-shifting Irish whose blood was mixed with that of seals, and the wind told her stories of Merlin, the sorcerer of whom Brion had spoken a time or two. The land spoke of uprising and upheaval, of pain and too little respect, and it told her, most frighteningly, of a time coming near when mystics would no longer be a part of the universe.

Mathonwy left the island an adult, and the men who rowed her back spoke nothing at all, for fear the deep-set determination in her stormy eyes would bring them into the arms of the sea.

She returned to Brion, and told him what she had seen, and told him further that she would cross the Irish Sea, and present herself as counselor to Coelwyr, the king of Camelot. He would take her on, she was certain, and with a Seeress of the old gods at his right hand, the magics she had studied would not be allowed to disappear.

She did not tell him, for she did not know, that she would never return to Ireland.

Days shy of the solstice, Mathonwy came to Camelot. She waited; she watched; and on the day that had concieved her sixteen years before, she presented herself to Coelwyr as advisor and counselor. His right hand, she knew now, was a man called Peredur, a stoic and determined Knight of the Grail: a warrior true. If he was the King's hand, Mathonwy decided, she must be the King's heart, to compliment the warrior men.

Her decision was far more true than she ever Saw, for Mathonwy, daughter of a dead village and heir to a dying power, had grown beautiful, unknowingly, and when, clad in pale blue, girded in Athena's grey, she stood before Coelwyr, she stole his heart.

She became advisor and counselor to the king, using her power to suggest the wisest course in the battle against Jurask, whose corruption fouled the land, and she did not know that he loved her.

On her eighteenth name-day, Coelwyr gave her a ring, a simple silver band with a sapphire, so deep blue as to be nearly black, inset. She thanked him, and wears it still, and never dreamed what such a gift might have been taken as.

She found herself in a silent battle of sorts with Peredur; devoted, intelligent, and deadly, he held strong to his Christian beliefs, disdainful of mystics and magics, and untrusting of them besides. In turn, his beliefs, both in his God and in his sword, were anthema to the mystical Celtic woman.

Inevitably, she fell in love with him.

It went entirely unspoken; the dark-haired sorceress had far too much pride to suggest to the warrior that they might make a fine pair, and she could not See her own future with any clarity.

Peredur, in his turn, fell equally in love with Mathonwy, and, for much the same reasons, did not speak of it.

In time, the war ended, and suddenly both sorceress and warrior found themselves being displaced. With the destruction of Jurask, much of the magic had gone from the land, and Mathonwy's struggle to maintain an equalibrium between magics, the Christian religion, and the advent of technology, found itself at a distinct disadvantage.

Peredur disappeared. Mathonwy, even more at a loss without her years-old rivalry, slipped into the background, still advising Coelwyr when requested, but largely a figure of time gone by. She began spending more and more of her time in the woods, partly to remind herself of her Irish home, and partly because there were certain areas of the wood that Peredur had, in his time, haunted.

It was there that he reappeared, with a lady named Tarot, to invite Mathonwy away from the world of Broken Camelot, and into a multiverse she had never imagined.

Almost, she said no. Vast dignity made accepting the offer seem something of a blow to the pride, following the man she loved into places unknown.

Camelot, though, held nothing for her: both the magic and Peredur were gone, and so she accepted his offer, and they travelled the paths of Shadow to Amber.

In Amber, Mathonwy learned of the possibility of magics far beyond anything she had ever tried, tested, or dreamed. She stayed a time in Amber with Peredur, who called himself Cadell now, and then, with as little explanation as he had offered, she disappeared.

Her focuses were intent: the lady Tarot had taught her something more of sorcery, and had verified that the art of shapeshifting was one that could be learned. Mathonwy sought out Elayne of Sawall, a House of Chaos, and asked to be her student. Nearly a year passed, and Mathonwy learned to shift her form from one to another. Not yet finished, but missing the warrior Cadell, she returned to Amber.

To her utter bafflement, almost immediatly upon seeing her again, Cadell proposed. Mathonwy accepted, and has left Amber little since.