Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan

  “Owain?” Gwydion cried, looking back, suddenly seeing no sign of him or Mili: “Owain!”

  He refused to go farther until Owain could part the crowd and reach his side, Mili firmly in hand. Owain looked breathless and frightened. Gwydion felt the same. But the crowd pushed and pulled at them, the pipers piped and the dancers danced, and they brought them into a hall smelling of food and ale.

  It can’t be this simple, Gwydion thought, and made up his mind that no one should part him from Owain, Mili, or their swords. He looked about him, bedazzled, at a wedding feast that must have taken days to prepare.

  But how could they know I’d get here? he wondered. Did they do this for all the suitors that failed—and celebrate their funerals, then… with their wedding feast?

  At which thought he felt cold through and through, and found Eri’s hand on his arm disquieting; but Madog himself waited to receive them in the hall, and joined their hands and plighted them their vows, to make them man and wife, come what might—

  “So long at you both shall live,” Madog said, pressing their hands together. “And when there is an heir, Prince Gwydion shall have the third of my lands, and his father shall rule in peace so long as he shall live.”

  Gwydion misliked the last—Gwydion thought in alarm: As long as he lives.

  But Madog went on, saying, “—be you wed, be you wed, be you wed,” three times, as if it were a spell—then: “Kiss your bride, son-in-law.”

  The well-wishes from the guests roared like the sea. The sea was in Eri’s eyes, deep and blue and drowning. He heard Mili growl as he kissed Eri’s lips once, twice, three times.

  The pipers played, the people cheered, no few of whom indeed might have been King Ban’s, or Lugh’s, or Lughdan’s. Perhaps, Gwydion dared think, perhaps it was hope he brought to them, perhaps he truly had won, after all, and the dreadful thread Madog posed was lifted, so that Madog would be their neighbor, no worse than the worst they had had, and perhaps, if well-disposed, better than one or two.

  Perhaps, he thought, sitting at Madog’s right hand with his bride at his right and with Owain just beyond, perhaps there truly was cause to hope, and he could ride away from here alive—though he feared he could find no cause to do so tonight, with so much prepared, with an anxious young bride and King Madog determined to indulge his beautiful daughter. Women hurried about with flowers and torches, with linens and brooms and platters and plates, tumblers ran riot, dancers leaped and cavorted—one of whom came to grief against an ale-server. Both went down, in Madog’s very face, and the hall grew still and dangerous.

  But Eri laughed and clapped her hands, a laughter so small and faint until her father laughed, and all the hall laughed; and Gwydion remembered then to breathe, while Eri hugged his arm and laughed up at him with those sea-blue eyes.

  “More ale!” Madog called. “Less spillage, there!”

  The dreadful wizard could joke, then. Gwydion drew two easier breaths, and someone filled their cups. He drank, but prudently: he caught Owain’s eye, and Owain his—while Mili having found a bone to her liking, with a great deal of meat to it, worried it happily in the straw beneath the table.

  There were healths drunk, there were blessings said, at each of which one had to drink—and Madog laughed and called Gwydion a fine son-in-law, asked him about his campaign against the bandits and swore he was glad to have friends and his kin and anyone he cared to bring here: Madog got up and clapped Owain on the shoulder too, and asked was Owain wed, and, informed Owain was not, called out to the hall that here was another fine catch, and where were the young maids to keep Owain from chill on his master’s wedding night?

  Owain protested in some embarrassment, starting to his feet—

  But drink overcame him, and he sat down again with a hand to his brow. Gwydion saw it with concern, while Madog touched Gwydion’s arm on the other side and said, “The women are ready,” slyly bidding him finish his ale before hand.

  Gwydion rose and handed his bride to her waiting women. “Owain!” Gwydion said then sharply, and Owain gained his feet, saying something Gwydion could not hear with all the people cheering and the piper starting up, but he saw Owain was distressed. Gwydion resisted the women pulling at him, stood fast until Owain reached him, flushed with ale and embarrassment. The men surrounded him with bawdy cheers and more offered cups.

  It was his turn then on the stairs, more cups thrust on him, Madog clapping him on the shoulder and hugging him and calling him the son he had always wanted, and saying there should be peace in Dyfed for a hundred years… unfailing friendship with his father and his kin—greater things, should he have ambitions…

  The room spun around. Voices buzzed. They pushed him up the stairs, Owain and Mili notwithstanding, Mili barking all the while. They brought him down the upstairs hall, they opened the door to the bridal chamber.

  On pitch dark.

  Perhaps it was cowardly to balk. Gwydion thought so, in the instant the laughing men gave him a push between the shoulders. Shame kept him from calling Owain to his rescue. The door shut at his back.

  He heard rustling in the dark and imagined coils and scales. Eri’s soft voice said, “My lord?”

  A faint starlight edged the shutters. His eyes made out the furnishings, now that the flare of torches had left his sight. It was the rustling of the bedclothes he heard. He saw a woman’s shoulder and arm faintly in the shadowed bed, in the scant starshine that shutter let through.

  He backed against the door, found the latch behind him, cracked it the least little bit outward and saw Owain leaning there against his arm, facing the lamplit wall outside, flushed of face and ashamed to meet his eyes at such close range.

  “I’m here, m’lord.” Owain breathed, on ale-fumes. Owain never called him lord, but Owain was greatly embarrassed tonight. “The lot’s gone down the stairs now. I’ll be here the night. I’ll not leave this door, no sleep, I swear to you.”

  Gwydion gave him a worried look, wishing the two of them dared escape this hall and Madog’s well-wishes, running pell-mell back to his own house, his parents’ advice, and childhood. But, “Good,” he said, and carefully pulled the door to, making himself blind in the dark again. He let the latch fall and catch.

  “My lord?” Eri said faintly.

  He felt quite foolish, himself and Owain conspiring together like boys at an orchard wall, when it was a young bride waiting for him, innocent and probably as anxious as he. He nerved himself, walked up by the bed and opened the shutters wide on a night sky brighter than the dark behind him.

  But with the cool night wind blowing into the room he thought of dragons, wondered whether opening the window to the sky was wise at all, and wondered what was slipping out of bed with the whispering of the bedclothes. His bride forwardly clasped his arm, wound fingers into his and swayed against him, saying how beautiful the stars were.

  Perhaps that invited courtly words. He murmured some such. He found the courage to take Madog’s daughter in his arms and kiss her, and thereafter—

  He waked abed with the faint dawn coming through the window, his sword tangled with his leg and his arm ensnared in a woman’s unbound hair—

  Hair raven black.

  He leaped up trailing sheets, while a strange young woman sat up to snatch the bedclothes to her, with her black hair flowing about her shoulders, her eyes dark and cold and fathomless.

  “Where’s my wife?” he cried.

  She smiled, thin-lipped, rose from the bed, drawing the sheets about her like royal robes. “Why, you see her, husband.”

  He rushed to the door and lifted the latch. The door did not budge, hardly rattled when he shoved it with all his strength. “Owain?” he cried, and pounded it with his fist. “Owain!”

  No answer came. Gwydion turned slowly to face the woman, dreading what other shape she might take. But she sat down wrapped in the sheets with one knee on the rumpled bed, looking at him. Her hair spread about her like a web of shadows in the dawn. As much as Eri
had been an innocent girl, this was a woman far past Eri’s innocence or his own.

  He asked, “Where’s Owain? What’s become of him?”

  “Guesting elsewhere.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Glasog,” she said, and shrugged, the dawn wind carrying long strands of her hair about her shoulders. “Or Eri, if you’d like. My father’s eldest daughter and younger, all in one, since he has none but me.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Why all this pretence if you were the bargain?”

  “People trust Eri. She’s so fair, so kind.”

  “What do you want? What does your father want?”

  “A claim on your father’s land. The last kingdom of Dyfed. And you’ve come to give it to us.”

  Gwydion remembered nothing of what might have happened last night. He remembered nothing of anything he should have heard or done last night, abed with Glasog the witch, Madog’s raven-haired daughter. He felt cold and hollow and desperate, asking, “On your oath, is Owain safe?”

  “And would you believe my oath?” Glasog asked.

  “I’ll see your father,” Gwydion said shortly. “Trickery or not, he swore me the third of his kingdom for your dowry. Younger or elder, or both, you’re my wife. Will he break his word?”

  Glasog said, “An heir. Then he’ll release you and your friend, and your father will reign in peace… so long as he lives.”

  Gwydion walked to the open window, gazing at a paling, still sunless sky. He feared he knew what that release would be—the release of himself and Owain from life, while the child he sired would become heir to his father’s kingdom with Madog to enforce that right.

  So long as his father lived… so long at that unfortunate child might live, for that matter, once the inheritance of Ogan’s line and Ogan’s Luck passed securely into Madog’s line—his father’s kingdom taken and for no battle, no war, only a paltry handful of lies and lives.

  He looked across the scorched hills, toward a home he could not reach, a father who could not advise him. He dared not hope that Owain might have escaped to bring word to his father: I’ll not leave this door, Owain had said—and they would have had to carry Owain away by force or sorcery. Mili with him.

  It was sorcery that must have made him sleep and forget last night. It was sorcery that he must have seen when he turned from the window and saw Eri sitting there, rosy-pale and golden, patting the place beside her and bidding him come back to bed.

  He shuddered and turned and hit the window ledge, hurting his hand. He thought of flight, even of drawing the sword and killing Madog’s daughter, before this princess could conceive and doom him and his parents…

  Glasog’s voice said, slowly, from Eri’s lips, “If you try anything so rash, my father won’t need your friend any longer, will he? I certainly wouldn’t be in his place then. I’ll hardly be in it now.”

  “What have you done with Owain?”

  Eri shrugged. Glasog’s voice said, “Dear husband—”

  “The marriage wasn’t consummated,” he said, “for all I remember.”

  It was Glasog who lifted a shoulder. Black hair parted. “To sorcery—does it matter?”

  He looked desperately toward the window. He said, without looking at her: “I’ve something to say about that, don’t you think?”

  “No, you don’t. If you wouldn’t, or couldn’t, the words are said, the vows are made, the oaths are taken. If not your child—anyone’s will do, for all men know or care.”

  He looked at her to see if he understood what he thought he had, and Glasog gathered a thick skein of her hair—and drew it over her shoulder.

  “The oaths are made,” Glasog said. “Any lie will do. Any child will do.”

  “There’s my word against it,” Gwydion said.

  Glasog shook her head gravely. “A lie’s nothing to my father. A life is nothing.” She stood up, shook out her hair, and hugged the sheets about her. Dawn lent a sudden and unkind light to Glasog’s face, showing hollow cheeks, a grim mouth, a dark and sullen eye that promised nothing of compromise.

  Why? he asked himself. Why this much of truth? Why not Eri’s face?

  She said, “What will you, husband?”

  “Ask tonight,” he said, hoping only for time and better counsel.

  She inclined her head, walked between him and the window, lifting her arms wide. For an instant the morning sun showed a woman’s body against the sheets. Then—it might have been a trick of the eyes—black hair spread into black wings, something flew to the window and the sheet drifted to the floor.

  What about the dragon? he would have asked, but there was no one to ask.

  He went to the door and tried it again, in case sorcery had ceased. But it gave not at all, not to cleverness, not to force. He only bruised his shoulder, and leaned dejectedly against the door, sure now that he had made a terrible mistake.

  The window offered nothing but a sheer drop to the stones below, and when he tried that way, he could not force his shoulders through. There was no fire in the room, not so much as water to drink. He might fall on his sword, but he took Glasog at her word: it was the form of the marriage Madog had wanted, and they would only hide his death until it was convenient to reveal it. All the house had seen them wed and bedded, even Owain—who, being honest, could swear only what he had seen and what he had guessed—but never, never to the truth of what had happened last night.

  Ogan’s fabled Luck should have served him better, he thought, casting himself onto the bedside, head in hands. It should have served all of them better, this Luck his great grandfather had said only faithlessness could break—

  But was Glasog herself not faithlessness incarnate? Was not Madog?

  If that was the barb in great grandfather’s blessing—it had done nothing but bring him and his family into Madog’s hands. But it seemed to him that the fay were reputed for twists and turns in their gifts, and if they had made one such twist they might make another: all he knew was to hew the course Ogan’s sons had always followed.

  So he had come here in good faith, been caught though abuse of that faith, and though he might perhaps seize the chance to come at Madog himself, that was treachery for treachery, and if he had any last whisper of belief in his luck, that was what he most should not do.

  “Is there a child?” Madog asked, and Glasog said,

  “Not yet. Not yet. Be patient.”

  “There’s not,” Madog said testily, “forever. Remember that.”

  “I remember,” Glasog said.

  “You wouldn’t grow fond of him—or foolish?”

  “I?” quoth Glasog, with an arch of her brow. “I, fond? Not fond of the dragon, let us say. Not fond of poverty—or early dying.”

  “We’ll not fail. If not him—”

  “Truly, do you imagine the dragon will give you anything if the claim’s not legitimate? I think not. I do think not. It must be Gwydion’s child—and that, by nature, by Gwydion’s own will. That is the difficulty, isn’t it?”

  “You vaunt your sorcery. Use it!”

  Glasog said, coldly, “When needs be. If needs be. But it’s myself he’ll have, not Eri, and for myself, not Eri. That’s my demand in this.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  Glasog smiled with equal coldness. “This man has magical protections. His luck is no illusion and it’s not to cross. I don’t forget that. Don’t you. Trust me, father.”

  “I wonder how I got you.”

  Glasog still smiled. “Luck,” she said. “You want to be rid of the dragon, don’t you? Has my advice ever failed you? And isn’t it the old god’s bond that he’ll barter for questions?”

  Her father scowled. “It’s my life you’re bartering for, curse your cold heart. It’s my life you’re risking with your schemes—a life from each kingdom of Dyfed, that’s the barter we’ve made. We’ve caught Gwydion. We can’t stave the dragon off forever for your whims and your vapors, daughter. Get me a grandson—by whatever sorcery—and forget
this foolishness. Kill the dragon… do you think I’ve not tried that? All the princes in Dyfed have tried that.”

  Glasog said, with her grimmest look: “We’ve also Gwydion’s friend, don’t we? And isn’t he of Ogan’s kingdom?”

  Gwydion endured the hours until sunset, hungry and thirsty and having nothing whatever to do but stare out the slit of a window, over a black and desolate land.

  He wondered if Owain was even alive, or what had become of Mili.

  Once he saw a raven in flight, toward the south; and once, late, the sky growing dimly copper, he saw it return, it seemed more slowly, circling always to the right.

  Glasog? he wondered—or merely a raven looking for its supper?

  The sky went from copper to dusk. He felt the air grow chill. He thought of closing the shutters, but that was Glasog’s access. So he paced the floor, or looked out the window or simply listened to the distant comings and goings below which alone told him there was life in the place.

  Perhaps, he thought they only meant him to die of thirst and hunger, and perhaps he would never see or speak to a living soul again. He hoped Glasog would come by sunset, but she failed that; and by moonrise, but she did not come.

  At last, when he had fallen asleep in his waiting, a shadow swept in the window with a snap and flutter of dark wings, and Glasog stood wrapped only in dark hair and limned in starlight.

  He gathered himself up quickly, feeling still that he might be dreaming. “I expected you earlier,” he said.

  “I had enquiries to make,” she said, and walked to the table where—he did not know how, a cup and silver pitcher gleamed in reflected starlight. She lifted the pitcher and poured, and oh, he was thirsty. She offered it, and it might be poisoned for all he knew. At the very least it was enchanted, and perhaps only moondust and dreams. But she stood offering it; he drank, and it took both thirst and hunger away.

  She said, “You may have one wish of me, Gwydion. One wish. And then I may have two from you. Do you agree?”