by J. M. Hofer
With every day that passed, she cared less about the world that lay outside the mists of the Isle. Other than to see Bran and Gwion again, she had no desire to ever return.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Crystal Cave
Bran awoke in misery. He could not feel his fingers or toes, or stop his teeth from chattering. His clothes were damp. He wondered if somehow he might have rolled too near the stream as he slept. He looked in every direction, but saw nothing but darkness. I’ve no idea if it’s day or night.
After a moment of groping, he rose and felt his way along the walls of the black tunnel, seeking to know his surroundings better. He felt grooves along its sides, scratched out by the fingernails of the cauldron-born as they scraped away the earth to form the tunnel.
His only comfort was the sound of the stream flowing along the passage with him, like a friendly companion. He continued downstream, convinced the water would lead him to freedom. He tried not to think of how long he had been walking, reaching nothing, forcing down any impulse of panic or despondency—but, soon, even the stream sounded mocking and ominous to him.
What’s that? He stopped in his tracks, listening. For the first time in hours, he could hear something other than the sound of the water and his own breath.
Whatever it is, it’s coming this way. He pressed his body against the side of the passage, waiting to strike. It was certainly the shuffling sound of bare feet or hands upon the earth, not the sound any of his companions would make. So, when it came near enough, he reached out, found its neck, and snapped it with one swift move.
He listened intently, wondering if more were soon to follow, but none came. He severed his victim’s head and carried it by the hair with him, continuing along downstream.
Many more sounds began echoing through the corridor, carried on the foul air blowing through the tunnels. Must be night—they’re waking. He was surprisingly grateful for the eerie cries, for they gave him something to focus on. They also cued him which way to go, sometimes revealing a passage to his left or right. If he could find the creatures and secretly follow them, they might lead him out.
He moved along in the darkness, until the sounds led him to a place where cold air and a fine mist hit his face. The stream he had been following flowed over what he felt to be a mossy ledge, cascading into a pool which seemed to be some distance below. He listened carefully for the sounds of the cauldron-born, but heard nothing but the water. He tossed a large rock over the ledge. The sound of the water when it splashed told him the pool was deep enough to swim in. Please, let it be a way out.
He took a chance and dove into the pool. The icy water swallowed him up. He swam to the surface cautiously, sword still in hand. He had no idea which way he should swim, as everything was as black as soot, so he simply let the water’s current carry him. Soon, he encountered a disheartening sight—several pairs of limpid eyes, all trained on him. So much for finding them without being seen.
The current carried him directly toward the enemy. The moment he felt rock beneath his feet, he burst forth from the water in true warriors spirit—a terrible force of vengeance with the head of his latest victim held high in his left hand, and Dyrnwyn vice-gripped in his right.
The cauldron-born swarmed him like insects, their fingernails and teeth sinking into his flesh, but Bran was full of might and wrath—though he had suffered many wounds, in the end, he had ten more heads to add to the first.
He tossed them all into the water, letting the current carry them far from the bodies he had struck them from. Then, he waited, hoping more would come into the chamber that he could secretly follow.
He felt his way along in the darkness, trying to get an idea of how big the chamber was. While he felt his way around, his hand came upon a piece of rope—rope made of uniquely-braided horse-hair—the rope of his tribe. He wondered if somehow this was the same cavern where he and his men had discussed posting archers. Earlier in the day it had been lit by small slivers of sunlight. Either that, or his companions did not make it out, and the rope was all that was left of them.
He felt around for bodies or other clues, but found nothing. He then chided himself for his foolishness. What am I thinking? This can’t possibly be the same cavern we discovered before—I followed the stream, and water flows downward! There’s no way I could have traveled so far and ended up above the place I started from!
He searched the cavern walls for passageways and found many. He used his blade to carve a mark into the rock above the one he chose to explore first, so that he would know the place should he encounter it again. It took hours to come to the end of the first tunnel. His progress was painfully slow, as he had to walk hunched over, his broad shoulders barely clearing the sides. At last, he emerged, thrilled to stand up, but, to his dismay, he did not find himself outside. Instead, he was on yet another ledge within an echoing cavern—one that sounded eerily familiar.
He looked above him, wondering if he would be able to see light. It had to be morning by now. He peered upward, but saw nothing but blackness.
He was too tired to dive down and try another tunnel, so he lay down and slept right there upon the ledge, desperately hoping he would see daylight when he awoke.
***
He did not wake to sunlight, as he had wished. Only blackness greeted him when he opened his eyes.
Again, he tested the depth of the water beneath him. Finding it safe, he jumped down into the pool. He listened carefully for the cauldron-born, looking for the sick light of their eyes, but this time there were none lurking about.
He felt along the perimeter of the cavern above each of the tunnels. Eventually, he found the mark he had made. He proceeded to the next tunnel to his right, carved a new symbol above it, and moved in to see where it led.
He noticed right away that this particular tunnel was different. There were numerous supplementary tunnels leading off to the left and right as he made his way through, foul odors coming from some of them. He followed four of them in turn, making a mental map in his head, hoping they would lead him to the room where he and his companions had first encountered the corpses.
The tunnels he followed invariably did lead to corpses, but unfortunately none led to a way out. They were simply dead ends, in the truest sense; deep holes filled with the bones and carcasses of the victims the cauldron-born had fed upon.
He finished exploring yet another of their disgusting pits. He was making his way back toward the main tunnel, when he was alarmed by the sound of several cauldron-born moving toward him. Has night fallen again so quickly?
He could scarcely move his body through the small tunnel, so he knew there was no way he would be able to swing a sword in such a small space. The enemy decidedly had the advantage. Instead he returned to the pit, where the only option left to him was to jump down into it.
The stench of rotting bodies overwhelmed him. He suppressed the urge to vomit, covering his mouth and nose tightly with his tunic, and breathed through his mouth.
The cauldron-born were dragging something behind them. He soon heard the hideous sounds of what seemed to be at least three or four of them, feeding upon whatever they had brought in, tearing it to pieces. Gods, let it be an animal. Judging from the number of human bodies in the pit surrounding him, however, it was probably not.
The cauldron-born eventually tossed the remains of their victim down into the pit. Bran waited until he could no longer hear them before he began searching the bodies in the pit for supplies. He managed to find flint, old rope, a few small weapons and some clothing that would prove to be of use. He realized he had the means to light a torch, now. He took a long bone, wrapped it with rags, and worked the flint until he was able to ignite it.
The moment he achieved his goal he regretted it, for the light of the torch fell upon a mangled body that he knew well.
“Gareth!” he whispered. “Not you, brother! Not you! Not you!”
A fire of rage consumed him that could not be contained. He
let forth a thunderous, wrathful cry of agony, which echoed eerily through the chambers, sending his voice back to him.
It was not long before he spied several cauldron-born peering down into the pit from above. To his delight, they began jumping in to attack him. Though he was outnumbered, they could not pull him down—his feet were steady, as if rooted in the earth like an oak.
To his shock, Dyrnwyn alighted with blue fire, flames flowing up its blade, as if it had been ignited from within. It seemed the legend of Dyrnwyn was true. He had thought it was but a child’s tale.
He was mightily encouraged. He mowed the creatures down with renewed vengeance, yelling in their faces like a mad man, ruthlessly severing heads with his noble weapon. He soon stood soaked in their blood. Their heads and bodies piled up knee-deep around him, yet the beast of his wrath was still not satisfied. He yelled and yelled, calling out to his enemies, daring them to come, his chest rising and falling, his heart pounding, an iron grip around the hilt of the flaming sword of his people, until finally, no more came.
Bran looked over to where Gareth’s body lay. I can’t suffer this to be your final resting place, cousin. He had to figure out a way to take Gareth’s body with him and give him a proper Southern burial.
He had to escape the pit, first—but it was clear the walls were far too high and too smooth to climb, especially carrying Gareth’s body. After thinking a moment, he realized what must be done.
He hacked the heads off every corpse in the pit so that none would ever rise again, and then proceeded to build a stairway with the only material available to him.
Two hours later, the gruesome structure stood towering over him. He picked up Gareth’s body, and climbed out of the pit upon the backs of the dead.
***
Weeks passed, and Bran learned to navigate in the darkness. His other senses grew sharper. He could easily hear and even smell when the cauldron-born approached. He had also gotten much better at following them undetected.
He had a simple routine that kept him from going mad; sleep while the cauldron-born hunted, and look for food while the cauldron-born slept.
He returned every night to the pit he had found Gareth in, hoping not to find any familiar faces among the new corpses. He stripped the new bodies of everything left on them, severed their heads, and then crawled back out upon his human staircase. So far he had managed to amass a large amount of rope and a great many weapons. He placed them strategically throughout the tunnels. From the jewelry he found, he made lures and fishhooks.
He had explored each tunnel leading from the main cavern in turn, traveling along some of them for hours. To his disappointment, they always led him back to the main cavern.
His efforts to follow the cauldron-born out had not succeeded either—somehow, he was always either detected or he lost them.
He saw only one other possible way to escape his prison, and that was to swim out. He bided his time until the cauldron-born left to feed. When all was quiet, he dove into the icy water in the main cavern to search for underwater passages.
After several attempts, he found what he was looking for. He attempted to swim through, but to his dismay, it was far longer than he expected. He could not make it, and had to swim back. By the time he pulled out of the underwater tunnel, his lungs were nearly bursting. He broke the surface of the pool gasping desperately for air.
He tried again, getting a bit further, but still couldn’t find any place to come up for air.
For the next few nights, he continued to work at it, getting a bit further each time, but the span was simply too far to swim. He had to find a place to breathe along the way.
He tried swimming along the top of the corridor, face and hands up, feeling for any pocket in the rock where he could take a breath and rest. He counted as he moved along under the water, knowing exactly how much time he had before he had to turn back. At ten, fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five he had found nothing, but like a miracle, at thirty, his hand felt air! He pushed his face up, holding on to crevices in the rock. There was not enough space to bring his head completely out of the water, but there was enough for his mouth and nose, and he breathed in gratefully.
He submerged again and pulled himself along the rock as rapidly as he could, feeling for more pockets. He found another at the count of thirteen, then another at seventeen, and another at twenty-seven, and then, he felt the passage open up.
There was no longer rock over him, just water. He floated silently toward the surface and emerged. He breathed as slowly and quietly as he could, even though every fiber of his being wanted to greedily swallow huge lungfuls of air. He found he could stand, and so he did, silent as death, listening intently to his surroundings. He heard nothing but the sound of water dripping into the pool, and, by the sound of it, from a place far above his head. He could no longer feel where his body ended and the water began.
Gods, what’s that? Something had moved on the other side of the cavern. He stood completely still, listening, until he heard it slip into the water, barely disturbing the pool.
He swam furiously away from the sound and came to a wall. There was not much of a lip to stand on, but he could climb upwards from it. He pulled himself out and climbed furiously up the side of the cave, frantically feeling for foot and handholds.
In spite of his predicament, he smiled. One thing was for certain—he was no longer in the main cavern. He felt hundreds of tiny clusters of pointed rock, some big, some small, jutting out in all directions, with many facets and angles. He was able to get some twenty feet up from the surface of the pool before something quite large lurched out of the water, its jaws snapping just below where he clung. He heard it splash back into the water.
He realized that whatever was pursuing him, it could move on both land and water—and he had no idea which one it preferred.
He had to find some solid footing. Returning to the pool was not an option. He moved along the wall for what seemed like forever, knowing he was being silently followed by the creature below.
He felt the wall start to angle and turn. He managed to find a good handhold on the other side, and then swung himself around the corner.
He was still facing the wall, unable to turn, but to his great joy, he could faintly see his hands grasping clear stones that looked like ice. Great Mother be praised, there’s light in here!
He looked up and found the source of the pale light illuminating the cavern from overhead—a narrow crevice in the rock, just wide enough to let the light of the moon and stars through. He nearly cried for joy. A way out!
He moved along the wall toward the crevice as silently as he could, looking for a secure place to put his feet. Fortune was kind, and granted him one that was wide enough to stand on. He was able to turn around and take a good look at his surroundings.
He was awestruck. Every bit of faint light that managed to make its way in from overhead reflected off thousands of crystal facets in the walls, as if the entire cave were made of ice. Gods, what beauty.
He surveyed what lay below. The pool extended the length of the cavern. There was nothing but water beneath him, except for a small peninsula formed from crystals and stalagmites that stretched out into the center of the pool.
Bran’s heart leapt, for on that peninsula sat the Cauldron.
Had the Cauldron somehow transformed the cavern into the glittering citadel it now was? Or had it had always been so? Either way, it was clear why Cerridwen had chosen it. Smoke from the many fires that had been burned beneath the cauldron could rise and escape, and there were only two ways in or out that Bran could see—either through the crevice overhead, which he doubted any man could fit through, save a small child—or through the watery passage, which had taken him four nights to manage. How does she come and go?
Bran heard a splash, and looked down. He could now see the creature that had been stalking him in the clear water below. It was an eel-like fish the length of a man, with silvery skin. It had a lower jaw longer than its uppe
r, featuring needle-like protruding teeth. Bran smiled. It eats meat. That meant its flesh would very likely offer much more sustenance than the tiny meager fare he had been surviving on. He was ravenous for something more than the small fish, insects and bats he had been eating over the past month. The idea of a large fish dinner set his mouth to watering.
He needed to get to the peninsula. He moved along the wall toward his destination, surveying all of the angles in the crevice overhead with his sharp cave-conditioned eyesight, and patiently made his way there.
When he reached it, he noticed that the gap in the rock above him was far larger than he had originally thought. Thank you, Great Mother! His heart nearly pounded out of his chest with the thrilling prospect of escape.
The Cauldron sat but feet from him, looming ominously within the crystal chamber. It was filled with a pearlescent liquid that seemed to churn on its own.
Though he wanted nothing more than to return it to its rightful place, he knew it was impossible. Even if he were strong enough to turn it over and pour out the liquid, he could not hope get it out of there. It would be impossible to fit it through the gap overhead. It needed to remain where it was, for now.
He surveyed the gap overhead, thinking about how he was going to climb out, when suddenly, his senses screamed at him—he looked around and saw dozens of eel-fish swimming toward the peninsula, but that was not the only cause for his alarm. He whirled around to see an enormous black wolf emerging from the darkness on the opposite end of the peninsula.
He unsheathed Dyrnwyn. It ignited as it had before, flames flowing toward the top of the blade. The eel-fish swarmed toward the light in a frenzy. The sound of splashing water echoed ominously through the cavern.
The wolf paid it no mind. It bared its teeth, slowly closing in on him.
It attacked, lunging toward him. Its jaws snapped inches from Bran’s neck.
In that instant, Bran remembered the wounds he had seen on his mother’s neck, and on Cadoc’s corpse.
Wolf attack, many had said. Wolf attack.
