The flaming eyes sparked—and then tore the clurichaun apart at the waist.
“No!” Kegan roared.
The halves of Connal flew apart in a crimson mist, the clurichaun dead before he hit the ground.
Inhuman laughter ricocheted off the cliff.
Ignoring his growing weakness, Richard drove Lyrian straight toward the bodach. Not expecting the attack, the Unseelie creature had nowhere to go. Blue flames lit the night as Richard brought Arondight down in a raging arc. The bodach tried to evade it but was too slow; the sword cleaved one of its legs. The howl of the beast deafened the air. As it shrunk into an inky mass, it retreated toward the only area it could—the cliff edge and the open air beyond.
With as much will as he could muster, Richard sent his power into its chest. Fire exploded, a torrent of magic. The bodach fought for a moment, still cradling its lost leg, before the flames sent it flying off the cliff into the black abyss below.
All went still.
Arondight dissolving, Richard nearly blacked out atop Lyrian; he managed to remain horsed, if barely. Silence fell over the Snowdon. Deirdre aided Lugh. The remaining warriors of the Long Hand helped her as well and looked after their dead.
Kegan cradled the remains of Connal, weeping audibly.
“What was that thing?” Bran breathed.
“Part shadow, a death machine given life,” Richard mustered, wiping his sweaty brow and gulping the mountain air. “It is a pure hunter, one of the Unseelie Court. Given a scent, it will never stop…never stop until its prey is dead.”
“Whose scent did it have?”
“Yours, of course,” Richard snapped.
“Why me? How?”
“It could have been anything.” Richard shook his head. “Your coat. Some scrap of torn clothing. There are few bodachs left, those who exist are imprisoned and only released as assassins. Someone wants you dead—badly.”
“Did you kill it?”
“No,” Richard said, dismounting and barely keeping his feet. “But it will be gone for a few days.”
“How can that be? It can’t be more than a few hours behind us.”
“It landed on the other side of the river,” Richard said, pointing over the edge toward the ravine. “Bodachs can’t tolerate water. It will have to find some kind of bridge or fallen tree to cross for it to begin its pursuit again. That should take several days, unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless we are very unlucky.”
The knight turned to Kegan. The clurichaun sat with what remained of Connal in his arms, the tears cascading down into his beard. Richard didn’t know what to say.
Such grief had left him long ago.
“We will bury him here, my son. My son, my son,” he repeated in a whisper as he rocked back and forth.
With Snedeker returning, Willowyn, Lyrian, and the rest of the Rhedewyr surrounded Kegan and Connal. All of the horses lowered their heads, eyes closed.
Richard watched the homage to the horse caretakers.
It would be a long night of sorrow.
The first ghostly murmur dragged Bran from troubled sleep.
He raised his head up, fully alert, and listened to the night. The group had moved off the trail into a sparse copse of fir trees where they couldn’t be seen by possible mountain travelers. The insects had long since ended their song and the stars occasionally fought through the foggy film of the Nharth that had snuck in as true night fell. Whatever animals that were still living in the Snowdon ignored the travelers. The sleeping lumps surrounding the dying fire did not move, and the hellyll Bran knew to be on watch was not evident. Arrow Jack sat perched, unmoving, above, and Snedeker slept nearby on an island of moss, his wings fluttering with every breath he took.
Nothing stirred. The camp was as silent as if the world had frozen and he alone could observe it.
The sound that had woken him was not clear.
With disappointment, Bran looked to the bedroll where Kegan should have been sleeping.
It was empty.
Bran laid back and stared up into the tree limbs, unsettled. The death of Connal was imprinted on his memory. Blame burned inside him like a fever. The clurichaun had tried to keep Bran safe—and had sacrificed his life for it.
There was no chance of removing the guilt.
While somewhere in the darkness, the bodach followed.
The whisper came again, more obvious now that he was awake, a tickling in the recesses of his mind. It was foreign but not intrusive, an offer rather than a command.
With sudden insight, Bran pulled the box containing the Paladr from his pocket, the silver knot scrollwork on its lid glimmering in the palm of his hand.
He ran his thumb over the lid of the box, about to open it.
“Think on this, boy. Don’t be rash.”
Bran stilled his hand. Richard stared at him from his bedroll, the knight lying on his side with eyes glittering in the midnight.
“What do you mean?”
“You have awakened the Paladr.”
“I don’t think so.”
Richard looked off into the darkness, half of his face lost to shadow. “It is aware, offering itself. Whenever you are in danger, it responds to the one who carries it. It did so in Dryvyd Wood and it is doing so now. I can feel its magic even from here.”
“I haven’t felt this before,” Bran countered.
“No, but I bet you were thinking about Connal just now.”
“How did you know that?”
“What happened when you were confronted in Dryvyd Wood? When you were attacked by the bodach tonight?”
“The Paladr became hot in my pocket, like my hip was on fire.”
“It responds to your need when you are in danger,” Richard answered. “It is offering the protection and power of the Heliwr.”
“Did you know?” Bran asked. “Know what Merle meant by protection, I mean?”
“I guessed. I know the old man far better than he gives me credit for,” Richard said. “And I’m telling you to think it over. For all the reasons we’ve discussed and thousands more.”
Bran looked back into his hand, lost in thought. Merle had thrust the box there during the fight in Seattle with the command to use it only when Bran wanted protection. He had thought it a talisman of some sort, used and eventually discarded. Instead, if what Richard said was true, using the Paladr would come with a lifetime of servitude as the Heliwr. Richard had cautioned Bran to not trust Merle. In so doing though, the knight advocated Bran turn away from the one thing that offered protection—and the ability to never let happen again the sacrifice Connal, the two hellyll, and the other Tuatha de Dannan in Dryvyd Wood had made on his behalf.
“What happened to you?” Bran asked. “How did you give up responsibility over your own life, over the faith in yourself to summon Arondight?”
“Why are you even interested?”
Bran withheld his acidic reply. An owl hooted a lonely cry nearby. Long moments passed. Like many of the damaged people he had met on the street, Bran knew the knight would eventually share his story.
“I had a wife once,” Richard began finally, haltingly. “She was… my world. And she was taken from me.”
“And?” Bran prompted.
“Elizabeth,” Richard went on, his voice barely a whisper. “Elizabeth Welles. We met after I left my graduate studies at the University of Washington, met one night as she passed the bookstore. She loved books. She had a smile that could level me. Loved to joke. She saw the brighter side of living life. When we met we both just knew. We were married and I moved out of the bookstore apartment to share one with her in Pioneer Square.
“I was already a knight when we met, watching over the Seattle portal and keeping the worst of Annwn from coming into our city. Back then I was only several years older than you are now, cocksure of myself but unsure of my place in the world. She came into my life and it forever changed. She gave me more meaning than anyone ever had bef
ore her and since.”
A wildcat growled ferociously nearby, interrupting the tale, followed by a frightened squeal cut short by whatever prey the cat had killed.
“Did she know you were a knight?”
“Leaving in the middle of the night with no explanation leads any spouse to become suspicious,” Richard said tightly. “I can still remember the night I told her—about Annwn, the fey of both Courts, King Arthur, and how I possessed a power few in history had ever known and fewer yet had carried. She laughed when I told her the identity of Merle—laughed until I called Arondight. She spent the next several months reading all she could about Celtic mythology, the history of Europe and the Vatican—as well as my place in all of it. The questions were endless for days and days.”
“If I told anyone about this, I think they’d have me committed,” Bran said.
“When Merle first told me, I considered it myself.”
“And John Lewis Hugo knew of her, used her against you.”
“He knew all of it. Somehow,” Richard said, darkening. “As Merle suspected in Seattle, Philip has one of the relic mirrors. It’s the only explanation.”
“How did she die?”
“A korrigan, a shapeshifter and illusionist of sorts, came through the portal,” Richard said quietly. “I did not stop it in time.”
Bran nodded. The knight appeared haunted, an inner hatred—a manic self-loathing—having entered his eyes.
“When she died, you changed.”
“I did,” Richard agreed. “My role led to her death. Yes, I had power, power to prevent it. But sometimes that is not enough. I was young and foolish and believed that power gave me right to live and enjoy life as I saw fit.” Richard paused. “I tell you this now not to share my pain—nothing else pains me more than speaking of Elizabeth—but to prevent your own pain. I do not wish on you what I’ve gone through. You still have a choice.”
“So do you,” Bran replied.
Richard laughed darkly. “No. This is all I am now.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Once I lorded over the portal because I enjoyed how special it made me feel in the much larger scheme of the world,” Richard added. “I was humbled in the worst way, by a God I know exists and yet does not care for me. Now I stand guard against Annwn, hoping to prevent other people from having to experience the pain I’ve lived with for years and years now.”
“God has nothing to do with this,” Bran asserted.
“Doesn’t He?” Richard growled back.
Long minutes passed. Both men stared into the night.
“The bodach,” Bran said finally. “It won’t stop.”
“It won’t,” the knight said. “Once set upon prey, it will never give up.”
“And what if you aren’t there to protect me?” Bran asked. “Or Deirdre? Or Lugh?”
“If we rejoin the Seelie Court and it helps pull down the very stones of Caer Llion, your safety will not be an issue,” Richard said. “You will be free of harm.”
“Free until something else comes after me.”
The dying fire snapped, sending a coal shooting like a star into the night.
“That could happen to anyone,” Richard said. “You still have a choice.”
“And was Kegan’s son given a choice?”
“People die, Bran,” Richard said coldly. “The world is not all light and airy. Connal’s death is sad. But it does not make it your fault.”
Bran squeezed the Paladr box. “If I had the means to stop it, then I am at fault.”
“Bran, don’t be ridicu—”
“No!” Bran hissed, a fountain of repressed rage bursting forth. “Kegan holds silent vigil tonight over Connal’s grave because his son fought to protect me—to protect a stranger not even from his world! And he’s not the only one. How many died saving us from John Lewis Hugo and his minions?” Bran burned with conviction. “Saving me? And you?”
Richard stared hard at Bran. Seconds turned into minutes.
“You know, I’ve seen the way you look at her,” the knight said.
Bran knew exactly what Richard meant. Deirdre slept nearby. Bran could see her red hair and the easy fall of her chest. From the time he had first seen her in Dryvyd Wood, to riding with his hands about her waist, to staring at her across the table at the Seelie Court meeting, Bran was falling for her. He had never felt like this. Sadly, it was obvious she favored the knight for a reason Bran could not fathom. The way she looked at Richard when he wasn’t aware could not be denied. It couldn’t be how he treated her. The death of his wife had destroyed him. It had to be something else, something Bran was not.
“Becoming a knight won’t help you woo her,” Richard said, as if reading his thought.
“That is not the reason I do this!”
“Isn’t it?”
“I won’t let more blood spill at my account,” Bran said, turning the conversation away from Deirdre and gripping the box like a lifeline. “She has nothing to do with it. Will you help me or not?”
“I will,” Richard murmured. “If you are truly set on this.”
“Merle knew,” Bran whispered. “He knew it would come to this.”
“No,” Richard said stoically. “Merle knew the possibility could unfold. It is you and you alone who make this choice. You can turn away right now, leave it behind, forget it.”
“Can Kegan forget his son?” Bran said bitterly. “Can I?”
“No. I suppose not.”
“Unlike you, I want to be responsible for myself,” Bran said. “Right now I am no better than you on the street, asking for a free ticket, hoping others will take care of me while they foot the bill. No longer.”
“That’s it, huh?”
“I have to own my part in all of this. It is the only way.”
“There is more for you to hear,” Richard growled low, the dying embers of the fire mirrored in his eyes. “What you plan goes beyond responsibility into martyrdom. Once, long ago, the Church existed to educate and build safe communities, where people watched out for their neighbor in a savage world. This is true of Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism—all of them. For centuries Christians mingled with Muslims who traded with Buddhists, and peace was maintained through mutual respect.
“But somewhere along the way, the relationships people held with other God-fearing people took on new, selfish undertones. Religion became something to fight over, despite the explicit instructions within doctrines to the contrary. Meaning and peace gave way to greed and fear. Hundreds of wars have been fought over it. The influence of religion is the main culprit for much of the death in our world. The Pope, his Cardinals, and even Archbishop Glenallen crave power and hope to see their Church expand and grow, just as Saint Peter ordered of them through the Vigilo. They are no better than Philip Plantagenet, extreme in their own beliefs.”
“What is your poin—” Bran started.
“Let me finish,” Richard said. “If you choose to take on the mantle of the Heliwr, you will have to walk a fine line between all of them—and maintain the balance between them and Annwn. The power you will possess will not be your power alone but that of two worlds—needed by two worlds. All will try to use you to their advantage, just like they tried with your father. Is that something you truly want? Can you even comprehend what I am saying?”
“I don’t know,” Bran admitted, his anger subsiding. “But I cannot keep relying on you. On others.”
“You are bent on this then?”
“I am. You convinced me. How do I become the Heliwr?”
“As I told you back in the Cadarn, I have no idea.”
Bran opened the box. The silver outline of the Paladr winked. He took it out and held it in his hand. The Paladr was warm, the edges of the acorn-like seed smooth against his palm. He hoped he was making the right choice.
The earlier whisper came again, a tickle of sentience.
Away. Upward.
“It wants me to go up into the mountains,”
Bran said, surprised by the voice.
Richard undid his blankets as if to rise. “I’ll come with you.”
“No,” Bran said. “I will do this alone.”
“I see,” Richard said simply, lying back down.
“If I don’t return by morning…”
“I will come looking for you, yes,” Richard offered. He sighed. “Good luck, boy. I can no more tell you what to do than the Church should. I hope you know what you are doing.”
Bran looked to where he knew the uppermost fringes of the mountains existed. He saw nothing. Fog swallowed the entirety of the Snowdon whole. It would be a long, dangerous climb in the middle of the night.
Bran fought his fear. It would do him no good.
With the camp long at his back and letting the whisper of the Paladr guide him, Bran followed a small deer trail and climbed over the boulder-strewn mountain, in search of answers he had to have.
The seed in his hand burned the entire time.
The Snowdon reared above, a massive presence; the Nharth swirled around him, faces lost in the mist. Even though the darkness of night hid most of the world, Bran had no trouble making his way; some aspect of the Paladr guided him, outlined the world in shades of gray as if it knew the land and every obstacle, bend in the path, and low-hanging tree branch. It called him onward, through a forest grown wild with pine and fir, the power of the witch oddly absent, and the heady odor of healthy life blending with the mineral tang of trickling water all around him.
Bran breathed in the cool night air. It would have been oddly relaxing, if not for the circumstances.
He was a long way from home, from the life he had once led. Speaking to Richard and hearing how the knight had fallen to such dark depths did nothing to dissuade Bran from his choice. He wanted to make something of his life. The death of Connal had been the final straw breaking his burdened back.
He would die before becoming a man he despised.
“Where you think you are going, treesqueak?”
The Dark Thorn Page 22
