by Frewin Jones
She struggled, trying to get her feet loose, but the stone only bit harder against her ankles until she had to cry out with the pain. Merion loomed over her, the lipless mouth opening like a grave. Branwen’s gorge rose as she looked up into the sunken eyes, seeing nothing but the flicker of a macabre yellow light under the heavy brows. She had at first thought that gleam to be reflected candlelight, but now she understood that the malignancy burned from deep within the hoary Mountain Hag.
Fain’s wings fluttered uneasily as Branwen fought in vain to free herself.
“Kill me then and be done with it!” Branwen shouted.
A hand snaked out, and a cold grip clamped viciously on Branwen’s upper arm. The huge face loomed closer.
“I have such power as you have never seen.” Merion’s breath was like ice on Branwen’s face. “I am the earth shaker, the rift opener—the devourer. My mouth is wide, my belly insatiable. I can drink an ocean dry. I can eat forest and field and moor. You are but a sweet passing morsel to me, Warrior Child. I shall rip you open like a ripe plum, and I shall gorge on you!”
Branwen struggled to pull free; but the fingers were locked agonizingly on her arm, and already a numbness was creeping down to her hand. Fain spread wide gray wings and took to the air, cawing loudly.
The words of a song sung to her by a bard in the Great Hall of Doeth Palas came into her mind:
Merion of the Stones
Mountain crone, cave dweller, oracle, and deceiver …
Deceiver?
Branwen stopped struggling, trying desperately to clear her mind, to see beyond the pain and the fear and the yellow flames in the hidden eyes.
“Why do they call you deceiver?” Branwen shouted. But she thought she knew. “This is not real! This is untrue! Get away from me! I was not brought here to be your supper!” Already the pain was lessening in her arm, the grip loosening, the cold breath no longer blasting in her face.
She staggered as the jaws of rock pulled away from her ankles. The huge, loathsome shape was gone. The yellow candlelight flickered. Merion crouched against the wall, small and shrunken and watching with an amused and curiously satisfied expression on her misshapen, unlovely face.
“You will do,” Merion croaked, beating her stick on the hard ground. “You will do very well. It was a good choice She made.” She cackled for a few moments, her mouth hanging open to reveal brown peg-teeth and a tongue like cracked leather.
“You were testing me?” Branwen cried, striding forward angrily. “Haven’t I proven myself enough for you by now?” She paused as something the hag had said rang in her mind. “What do you mean, ‘It was a good choice She made'? Do you speak of Rhiannon?”
“No, Warrior Child, it was not she who chose you. Do you not know that by now? We are Guardians—we make no such choices.”
“Then who?” Fain came to Branwen, perching on her shoulder, gripping tight, and keeping close to her head.
“Who is of no consequence to you at this time, Warrior Child” came Merion’s grinding voice. “How is more to the purpose. How you are to serve me.”
“Rhiannon warned me of a great canker in the land,” said Branwen. “Now I know the true meaning behind her words. Llew ap Gelert must be destroyed. And you are to tell me how.”
“That is not your task, Warrior Child,” growled the ancient crone, stamping again with her gnarled stick. “Riddle me this: Who is it that soothes the blistering mountain when the summer sun beats down so fierce? Whose hand cools the brow of the lofty crag when the air rises in a shimmering haze and the buzzards hang motionless above the valley?”
Branwen stared at her, baffled by her questions, not even sure whether she was meant to answer.
“Who brings news from distant places when all the world is frozen? Who speaks in the gullies and ghylls? Whose voice echoes through the caverns?”
There was silence.
It became obvious that Merion was waiting for a response. Branwen thought through the odd questions. “Is it the wind?” she asked. A sudden understanding hit her. “The north wind! You mean Caradoc of the North Wind!”
The crone laughed again, slapping her knee and cracking her stick on the floor. “Did I not say a wise fool? Yes, Warrior Child, I speak of my brother the wind—my lost brother Caradoc.” A bony finger pointed across the candlelight. “This is the task I
lay upon you, Warrior Child—to seek for the place where the Saxons have caged my lovely brother … my droll and diverting brother … my dancing clown, my shape-shifting brother….” Her voice lowered to an incoherent muttering, as if she had forgotten Branwen was there.
“Is Caradoc a prisoner of the Saxons?” Branwen asked incredulously.
The hag’s head had thrust forward, the wattles of her neck shaking like hanks of rope. “He is!” she cried. “They trapped him in their foul webs, the dirty priesthood of the Saxons. Ten times ten years ago he fell to their wiles and was borne away.” Her voice rose to a wail. “My brother! My beautiful, bonny brother! I ache to hear your voice again! But you shall be restored to me. You shall be set free! The child has come to me at last—the child with the golden key!”
Branwen was astonished. She stared at the crone in utter bewilderment and disbelief. Of all the ends she had feared on this mountain—of all the tasks she had contemplated—to be asked to rescue one of the Shining Ones was so far beyond expectation that she was dumbfounded.
Merion peered into her face. “You will travel east, Warrior Child,” she said as though oblivious to Branwen’s consternation. “You will seek out Caradoc’s prison and you will bring it to me, for only under my eye will it be safe for you to use the key and release him.” There was a pause, then the stick cracked down hard on the ground. “Warrior Child? Are you struck witless? Do you understand your task?”
Branwen started at the shout. “That’s no task for me,” she said. “My destiny is to save Brython from the Saxons, to defeat the traitor Llew, to raise an army against the invaders. That is what Rhiannon told me.” She shook her head. “If Caradoc of the North Wind cannot save himself, what hope do I have?”
Merion’s voice became impatient. “My brother is held by spells and incantations that have no power over you, Warrior Child,” she said. “And why do you bear the golden key if you are not to be the instrument of his release?”
“What key?” demanded Branwen. “I have no key. What is this key of which you speak?”
The hag lifted her arm and jerkily pointed the stick toward Branwen’s waist. “The golden key!” she growled. “I see it there, hanging from your belt! Do you think me blind, child?”
Branwen stared down at the few precious possessions that hung from the leather belt: a poke with flint and tinder in it, a haircomb that her mother had given her. A leather pouch that held six pieces of white crystal that Geraint had found on the mountain and given to her as a keepsake. And a small golden key gifted to her by her father on the tenth anniversary of her birth.
Branwen fingered the small key.
“You’re wrong,” she said, closing her fist around the key as though wanting to protect it from Merion’s cold gaze. “This has nothing to do with the Old Gods; my father found it in the ruins of a Roman temple when he was but a youth. He gave it to me as a birthday present.”
Merion’s crowing laughter rang around the cavern. “And who do you suppose guided your father’s footsteps to that desolate place, and who revealed to him at that moment the golden glint among the wreck and the ruin?” She cackled. “And who put it into his heart years later to pass the key on to his daughter?” The yellow eyes sparked like igniting flame. “Do you not perceive the truth yet, Warrior Child? There have been no loose threads in the pattern of your life; all that has happened to you is but part of the same great design.” The stick hammered again. “The key will open Caradoc’s prison—of that truth have no doubt, Warrior Child. All that you bear has its own purpose, its own part to play. Think you the white stones came to you by chance?”
“The stones?” Branwen clutched involuntarily at the leather pouch. “Geraint’s crystals, you mean?”
“Found by your brother, given to you,” said the Crone. “A thread in the tapestry.”
Branwen gaped at her. “Have you been haunting my family’s steps from before I was born?” she exclaimed. “Has there been no moment of my life free of your wiles and your ruses and intrigues?”
Merion shook her head. “You do not listen, Warrior Child,” she rebuked her. “It is not we who chose you; it is not we who wove the tapestry of your fate. It is She! Hers is the guiding hand—Hers the whispered word, Hers the womb from which all life springs, Hers the arms that embrace the past and the present and the future. Hers the burden of love for all of creation.”
As Merion spoke, Branwen felt a strange and overwhelming sensation. It was indescribable, inexplicable; but for a fleeting moment it was as though the vast, unknowable power that held the world in balance had turned from its unending task and focused its attention on her. For that splintered fraction of time, Branwen felt its presence bearing down on her, as strong as the heat and light of the noonday sun.
Then, in an instant, the sensation was gone. Branwen understood now that it would be pointless to seek from Merion of the Stones further knowledge of this great She. Such wonders would only be revealed in their own time and in their own way.
Branwen wiped her sleeve across her forehead, feeling feverish. There was a gaping feeling of emptiness under her ribs and a cold sweat on her skin.
“What must I do?” she asked Merion, wanting now only to get out of this bleak and chilling cavern and to see blue sky overhead and to be with her companions again.
“Come here to me,” said Merion. “Show me the white stones.”
Trembling, but not from fear, Branwen loosened the leather pouch from her belt as she stepped forward. She untied the neck and tipped the six crystals into her palm, then came around the yellow candle and stood in front of Merion, offering out her hand with all the determined trepidation of someone reaching into a fire to pull a friend to safety.
The Mountain Crone leaned forward. Her cold breath eddied around Branwen’s fingers. The crystals glittered and shone as though frosted with ice; and deep in the heart of each of them, Branwen saw a tiny rainbow coiling.
She had seen those beguiling flecks of colored light before—they came when the crystals were held up to sunlight and tilted in exactly the right way. But never before had the rainbows revealed themselves in such darkness.
Merion lifted an arm and passed her wrinkled old hand over the stones, muttering to herself words that Branwen could not make out.
“There, ‘tis done,” said the Stone Hag. “Keep them safe, Warrior Child. I have breathed part of my own powers into them. I am diminished by this loss, and I will not be whole again till you return from your mission and need them no more.”
Branwen gazed at the translucent crystals. “What have you done to them?”
“They have now in them the power to allow you to pass unnoticed among your enemies,” said Merion.
“Use them wisely, Warrior Child. They will not make you invisible, but they will cause the eyes and the attention of ill-wishers to pass you by.” “Is the power only for me?”
“Nay, any of your followers who hold in their hand one of the stones will be protected by their powers,” said Merion. “And one other virtue they have: they will allow the bearer to understand foreign speech.”
“I’ll be able to know what the Saxons are saying, even in their own language?”
“You will,” said Merion. “But the stones will not allow you to speak their tongue, only to understand it.” The yellow points in her hidden eyes flashed. “Know the limits of their powers, Warrior Child.”
“And will they help me to find where Caradoc is imprisoned?” Branwen asked.
“Nay, they have not the power for that,” said Merion. “You will need wit and perseverance to find where my brother is being held. But certain signs I can give you—pointers to help you on your road. The prison of Caradoc of the North Wind lies under the hand of the one-eyed warrior.”
Branwen nodded, closing her hand around the crystals. “The one-eyed warrior. Yes. I understand.”
“Seek the one-eyed warrior in the land of Mercia. You will recognize him; he is known to you.”
Branwen frowned. “I don’t know any warriors with one eye,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t.”
“You will know him well enough when you see him,” Merion insisted. “Do not doubt it.”
“And how will I know the prison?” asked Branwen. Her first thought was that Caradoc must be held in some strong fortress—in a stone room with a door of thick oak. But if that was true, then surely its lock would be a great iron device—certainly not a lock that could be opened with the small golden key her father had given her.
“You shall know the prison by this sign,” said the crone, passing her hands in front of Branwen’s face. A haze hung in the air like breath on a frosty morning, and there was a moving silhouette in the haze, like something seen through thick mist.
Branwen lowered her eyebrows, squinting as she tried to focus on the shape. It was an animal, padding silently through the gray haze, its back long, its head lowered as though on the scent. Its fur was short, gray like the mist; and it had tufts of hair on its pointed ears. Large paws it had and a blunt face and a short, thick tail.
“It’s a cat!” Branwen murmured, recognizing the smooth, predatory glide of the stocky body. “A big cat.”
“Aye, a lynx,” said Merion, lifting her hands again and dispersing the mist. “Where you see the lynx, there will you find Caradoc’s prison. But do not seek to use the key. Bear the prison back to me as swiftly as you can. If you free him and I am not at hand, he will kill you and all who are with you. Caradoc is a deadly force, and his anger will be great after being held so long against his will.”
“But what is the prison?” Branwen asked. In her mind she saw Caradoc as a full-grown man—so what kind of cage was it that could hold him?
“I do not know,” Merion said. “But remember this: we are not as you see us, Warrior Child. Divested of my human form, my true spirit is as vast as the sky. But its essence is also so small that it could be held between the cupped palms of your two hands.” The crone stared at her. “And now you have all the knowledge that I can give you,” she said. “Be gone from here and do not return but that you have Caradoc of the North Wind with you.”
And as Merion spoke these words, Branwen was hit by a blast of bitter, biting wind. Half blinding her, it sent her staggering backward, out of the cave and into the tunnel, Fain fluttering above her head. Turning her back to the icy gale, Branwen ran over the carpet of bones, her hair snapping and her clothes cracking as she threw herself gratefully toward the bright light of the cave mouth.
7
THE SUN HAD passed behind the mountain, and the shadows of afternoon were long among the summer-warm rocks as Branwen gathered her followers and told them all that had happened in the cave of Merion of the Stones.
Blodwedd crouched on a high boulder at her back, knees splayed, shoulders hunched, and head low—more frog than owl at that moment. She had already heard the tale, and she was more relieved that Branwen had survived the ordeal than she was astonished by the nature of the task that the Mountain Crone had set her.
But it quickly became clear to Branwen that not all her followers were so at ease with Merion’s enterprise.
“Are the Shining Ones not all powerful?” asked Dera. “How is it laid upon us to help them? I thought it would be the other way around.”
“So it has been up to now,” said Rhodri, looking uneasily at Branwen. “Are you sure Merion can be trusted?”
“Hist!” breathed Blodwedd, her eyes flickering. “Among the stones such things should not be voiced. Every pebble is an ear to her. Every cleft a whispering mouth!”
“And is that not enough to give us pause?” mu
rmured Iwan. “That we should fear to voice our doubts lest the Mountain Hag rolls boulders down the mountain to help us on our way?”
Branwen looked at him. “I understand your fears,” she said. “But the question I would have you answer is this: do you trust me?”
“Of course,” Iwan replied. “Why else would I be here?”
Their gazes locked for a few moments. Branwen felt a curious fluttering in her chest as she stared into Iwan’s unblinking eyes. She looked away and turned to the others. She saw confused and uncertain faces—especially among the four girls of Gwylan Canu.
“Listen, all of you,” she said, her voice firm and resolute. “I have been given a duty to perform, and I will go into the east as Merion of the Stones asked, and I will seek out the prison of Caradoc of the North Wind. That is the path of my destiny. I have no other choice.”
She saw Dera peering astutely into her face. “But we do have a choice, you mean,” she said after a few moments. “I see. Once again you’d be rid of us, Branwen.”
“Yes,” Branwen said. “Yes, I would. I would be rid of any who have doubts or distrust in their hearts. Dera, and you others—Aberfa and Banon and Linette—you joined with me to fight the Saxons and to see Llew ap Gelert brought down. My quest in the east is not of that business. You owe me nothing.”
“Nothing but our lives,” said Linette. “Where would we be now, Branwen, if not for you?”
“Trammeled like beasts in the pits of Gwylan Canu we would be,” added Banon. “Awaiting the pleasures of our Saxon captors—death or servitude, or worse abominations!”
“It wasn’t I who saved you when the Saxon ships appeared,” said Branwen. “It was Govannon of the Shining Ones.”
“All the more reason for keeping faith with you, Branwen ap Griffith,” growled Aberfa. “I am not considered wise or quick-witted, but it seems to me that if we cannot trust the Old Gods after they gave us their help at Gwylan Canu, then we may as well throw ourselves from the heights and put a swift end to our torments.” She looked up at Branwen from under her deep brows. “If the Shining Ones lead us false, then Brython is doomed and all its people with it.”
