Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (100 page)
Read Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 Online
Authors: Heartlight (v2.1)
AND KING HEREAFTER
/
have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations
sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my
purer mind, With tranquil restoration:
—
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
IT
WAS SOMETHING OF A SURPRISE TO FIND MYSELF LIVING AT MOORCOCK farm once more.
When Uncle Clarence died, the farm passed to Justin, with the caveat that I
should always be welcome to make my home there if I wished to. It took Justin
some years to persuade me that I should really be happy there, but it is a good
feeling to have family around me once more. Rowan can share something with
Colin that I never could, for all the years of our friendship. It is strange
what contentment I find in knowing that he has found it at last.
And
so we pass from darkness to darkness, rejoicing at our little time in the
Light. All is a sleep and a forgetting, save for those few walking among us who
have chosen to shoulder the burden of awareness from Life to Life. As the years
pass, the darkness that someday claims each of us becomes more real to me, and
more and more I think on what Colin said to me when he first set my feet upon
the path I was to follow all my life:
"The
great mass of humanity neither knows nor cares about magick and they have the
right to keep things that way
—
to not be troubled by forces
outside the scope of their daily lives, or manipulated by forces they have no
way of resisting. When I find someone interfering in people's lives with magick
in that fashion, it's my duty to stop them if I can
—
for their own sake, as well
as for the sake of the lives they may harm."
It is as good a summation as any,
for a life's work and a dear friend. Walk in the Light, Colin MacLaren. I know
we will meet again.
Enough
of science and of art;
Close
up these barren leaves.
Come
forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
—
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH