by Tara Janzen
“Chirrr-rrr-up.” Shay trilled the lark’s song once more, and the sound of beating wings filled the air. Ghostly pale, a flock of doves broke through the fog, flying in from the west and making for the wych elm. As one they settled in the tree to roost and coo about her. A smile brightened the elf-maid’s face.
“Shay,” she called out. “I know ’tis you who sends these fair friends my way. Ouch!” One of the turtledoves chose to nest in her hair and immediately got itself tangled in the silky strands. “Shay, you beast! Come help me!”
Mychael stood motionless, watching her as she freed the dove and moved it to a safer perch. The boy was not likely to win her heart with the bird trick, which no doubt had been his intent. A worthy incentive for the bother of finding and gathering a half-dozen turtledoves... or a hundred.
Shay was a romantic fool, but no more so than himself. Cursing softly, he took a step back and looked up into the trees. Shay could not be far.
Chapter 2
Llynya resettled the dove and returned her gaze to the surrounding woods. Shay was out there, close. She knew it, just as she knew she would be hard-pressed to find him if he didn’t want to be found. The fog was beginning to lift, though, which was to her advantage. Soon ’twas possible to make out the silhouettes of the birches growing along the river, of the alders and elms—and of a man standing alone in the shadows of the copse.
Startled, she went for her dagger. Closing her hand around the crystal hilt, she drew the blade partway out of its sheath. ’Twas not Shay. Had the bramble not held and let some wayfaring Welshman stumble upon them? Gods, had she grown so soft in Deri that she had lost her warrior’s edge and was no longer a fit watcher in the forest, babbling to chickadees like a child while a stranger stood not ten yards distant? He had seen her. There could be no doubt. He was probably watching her even now, wondering what fool thing she would do next. She quickly looked to Aedyth and found the old woman awake, yet well concealed and alert to the danger. Thus assured, she settled herself in to watch and wait. If he passed them by, so be it. If he did not, she would lead him on a merry chase he would not soon forget. Shay must already have the man in his sights and would not have forgotten how the game was played.
The waiting did not take long. Sunlight finally reached the river, sheeting down through the forest in roseate shades of gold, and thus was the man revealed.
Llynya’s hand fell to her side, the dagger forgotten as she stared in wonderment at whom the morning had delivered to her bower. Mychael ab Arawn. Ceridwen ab Arawn’s twin and the Christian God’s warrior, for he was the archer who had saved her life on the shores of Mor Sarff... a stranger, dressed all in white, with a bright copper streak running through his golden hair, a pure flame against the glowing violet wall of the damson cliffs.
He was looking into the trees as she had, and probably for the same reason—Shay. A swath of blue woad painted across his eyes reached from his left temple to his right and from above his eyebrows to the bridge of his nose, marking him as Liosalfar and half hiding his face in a maze of forest shadows, but he yet had the look of his sister.
Aye, he was Ceridwen’s brother, and a warrior aright, tall and lean like a Quicken-tree, but he was no tylwyth teg, nor a mere Welshman. He was what had brought her north, not Rhuddlan’s command.
Even in Deri she’d heard tales that he was half-wild, and from the looks of him, the tales were true. His hair, a tousled melange of copper and gold, fell every which length to his shoulders yet was noticeably shorter on top where his monk’s tonsure had grown. His clothes were patched and mended, his boots’ leather skinned from animals. A bow was slung across his shoulder, and two knives were sheathed in his belt, one with a dreamstone hilt.
He turned, his attention brought back to her by the rising sun, and their gazes met. A frisson of warning curled down her spine even as warmth suffused her cheeks. Disconcerted, her first thought was to vanish into the woods, but her need of him stayed her flight and had her peering back at him through the elm leaves.
His was a wilder beauty than his sister’s. His jaw was wider in the way of a man’s, his eyebrows less finely drawn, each feature cut to a stronger, fiercer edge—and none more fierce than his eyes. Of a paler, grayer hue than Ceridwen’s fair blue, they were piercing and yet translucent, baring part of his being to those with a knack for seeing it. Llynya had acquired somewhat of the knack during her months in Deri, and would grow into more, but in this case it took only a somewhat knack to see beyond the surface. He was sín, a storm rising.
Her gaze faltered and she glanced away, struck again by the warning she felt and the disturbing awareness that he was not what she had expected. The man on the cliffs had looked to be a savior. This man did not.
Yet he was Rhiannon’s son. ’Twas said Druids of old had called storms at will, conjured them to destroy their enemies, blizzards of snow and torrents of rain, thunder and lightning, winds to lift river water into an impassable veil, and fog so thick a man in the midst of it could not find himself.
Mychael ab Arawn was Druid.
She fingered a wisp of remaining fog and dared to look at him again, wondering. His gaze had not strayed from her, and she forced herself not to shy away. She should leave her perch and greet him, but some instinct kept her high in the elm. She had fallen into malaise at the end of the battle against Balor, and for sennights following the fight her mind had chosen not to remember anything of that day. In Deri, Aedyth had given her no choice but to recall the whole of it, and the first thing she had remembered was him, the archer with the unerring aim. The healer had told her Ceridwen’s brother yet resided in Merioneth with the Quicken-tree, and so she finally had come north again. Redemption, if it was to be hers, could only be found by journeying through the time weir of the golden worms—and the way of that could only be found in the deep dark where the Yr Is-ddwfn had long ago engraved their knowledge on the walls. Mychael ab Arawn had been there. He knew the dreaded black maze, he’d survived the wormholes.
He had tasted time.
The truth of it streaked through his flaxen hair like a copper flame. The only way to get that anomaly was to drop oneself down a live wormhole. Nemeton, the Brittany bard, had been marked in such a manner, steel gray running through auburn. Dain Lavrans, the magi of Wydehaw Castle, had begun to show the signs before he’d gone north with Ceridwen, his chestnut-colored strands turning white in a three-finger streak down the left side of his head, and mayhaps there was one other who bore the mark, if he had lived.
She let her gaze travel over Mychael again, his unkempt mane, the patched clothes of white monk’s wool overlaid with Quicken-tree grays and greens, and the eyes that revealed a far from gentle mien. Ceridwen had told her Mychael had long been a hooded brother of Strata Florida, those of the creed “Thou shalt not kill,” yet he had killed to save her. Was he still a monk then? she wondered. Or had changes come to him as they had come to her since that fateful battle?
He wore the blue woad of the Liosalfar, but no one had yet given him a Quicken-tree braid. She could do that for him, if she dared. No doubt she owed him a braid or two, or a half-dozen, and given a chance, she would start her twists and plaits within the copper strands of his hair. Given a chance, she would have a blazing streak of her own, a small price to pay to taste the shifting ethers of time and reclaim what she had lost.
Aye, sín or no, she had use of Mychael ab Arawn to save another reckless soul—Morgan ab Kynan, the Thief of Cardiff.
A shadow flitted between them, drawing her attention overhead. Nothing else in the tree moved. The doves had not ruffled a feather, yet she immediately found the shadow’s owner.
“Shay.” Her voice was soft, a bare whisper as she looked upward through the branches into a pair of eyes as green as hers, but far more innocent. He grinned down at her from where he sat on a limb.
“Malashm, sprite.”
“ ’Lashm, Shay.” Her eyes filled with sudden tears. So much had changed since she’d last seen him
. She’d grown so old and in truth was a child no more. One salty drop spilled over to run down her cheek, and she swiped at it with the back of her hand. It seemed she cried for no reason at all anymore—one of the more annoying changes.
“Llynya?” He lowered himself to her branch and crouched in front of her, his long hair flowing over his shoulders. His smile faded. “What’s this?” He took her chin in his hand and wiped away another tear with his thumb.
“ ’Snothing.” She squeezed her eyes shut and willed the tears to stop, embarrassed. She’d never cried in front of Shay before, except for once when she’d gashed her knee near to the bone while chasing after him in Wroneu. She still carried the scar from that escapade.
“You smell of lavender,” he said, and she felt him lean in close, so close his breath blew across her cheek. Then came a touch, soft and brief.
A kiss? Her eyes opened. From Shay? Aye, indeed things had changed, and not for the better.
Unbidden by intent, she looked to the copse—and found it empty. A sense of loss enveloped her, a feeling as inexplicable as her tears, which had stopped as suddenly as they had begun. She wiped the last of them away, looking all the while to the overgrown birch where Mychael ab Arawn had stood.
He was gone, disappeared without a trace, and she’d not had the courage to so much as say hullo. Vexation thinned her mouth into a tight line. She needed better of herself.
“Rhuddlan is waiting at Carn Merioneth, and Moira has sweet bannocks for you,” Shay said, breaking into her thoughts. He rose to his feet and took her hand to pull her up. “I’ll race you to the postern in the keep’s east wall.” The challenge came with a grin, but before she could answer, a rustling of leaves below had him reaching for a higher branch and levering himself out over the limb on which they stood. “Good morn, Aedyth,” he called down.
The old woman rose to sitting, brushing leaves off here and there as she looked up into the tree. “Good morn, Shay. Have you come to see us home then?” Her graying blond hair was plaited in a crown around her head with parts of the braid worked loose from sleep, but a tuck or two put the strands aright. Her eyes were bright, her fingers nimble, the signs of age showing mostly in the lines on her face.
“Aye, and give you first greeting. You made good time coming north.” He dropped out of the tree and landed lightly on his feet in front of her.
“As if these old bones would not,” Aedyth exclaimed in mock affront, accepting the hand Shay offered. Once on her feet, she brushed her skirts down. “If ’tis a race to the postern you want, I warrant I can give you one, if you would but even out the years a bit.”
His grin broadened. “What would you have me do?”
“Drink the river dry and cross over the moon while make I straightaway for the castle.”
“And I would still win,” he boasted with an ingenuous laugh.
The old woman shooed him off, smiling, and Llynya followed him into the trees. For the morning at least, she was free.
~ ~ ~
Madron walked quickly through Riverwood, her Quicken-tree cloak veiling her in the mist-bound shadows of the forest morn, the hood pulled up to cover the loose flow of her auburn hair. Not all of Balor’s cottars had run away when the keep had fallen to Rhuddlan, and she did well to take care.
Sunshine broke through the gloom in places, but did naught to lighten her mood. The day had barely begun and had already gone awry. Mychael ab Arawn had slipped free of her yet again. Recalcitrant, obstinate youth. She could help him, if he would let her, but he would forever go his own way, or Rhuddlan’s, playing into the elf-man’s hands as neatly as a hooked fish. Despite the Quicken-tree leader’s interference, she would not lose the boy, not as she’d lost his sister.
She came to a small stream, a freshet, and lifted the hems of her cloak and dark green gown before stepping nimbly across and continuing on her way.
Shay and Llynya were running in the forest this morn. She’d let them pass her by a quarter league back. The two of them had appeared carefree, but for the girl at least, ’twas bound to be a fleeting state. The sprite’s destiny was about to meet her head-on. Which brought Madron to her present problem and her woodland task, forced on her by the Quicken-tree and their damned brambling and tangling of the trees. ’Twould only get worse with the coming of Ailfinn Mapp—if the mage ever did come.
And if she did not, where did that leave Llynya? That Ailfinn had grown so powerful that she dared ignore Rhuddlan’s summons was not out of the question. That she would desert her acolyte, flighty as the maid could be, was out of the bounds of reason. Yr Is-ddwfn aethelings were not so thick on the ground, and Prydion Mages even less so.
Nay, whatever promise Llynya had shown for the magia mysterium would not be lightly cast aside by Ailfinn Mapp. The mage would come, if only for the sprite—and just by her mere presence be a hindrance to Madron.
Rhuddlan would have Carn Merioneth slip into the mists, hide it completely from the rest of the world with his arboreal dabbling, and mayhaps after the debacle of Balor Keep he was right. Mayhaps ’twas time to let Carn Merioneth fade from the memories of Men, but a path had to be left open. One path must always be left open, for there were travelers besides Prydion Magi who needed passage into Merioneth. If Rhuddlan couldn’t see the need for it, she could, and she would ensure that a path did stay open.
At the river, she turned south, following a worn track along the bank, her soft Quicken-tree boots leaving nary a mark. The Bredd grew narrower and deeper before it plunged beneath a giant’s cairn of tumbled boulders on the southern edge of Riverwood, never to surface again. The waters of the river flowed down into caverns, winding through a labyrinth of corridors and passages before reaching Lanbarrdein, a cavern of near unimaginable size and riches deep in the earth. From Lanbarrdein, part of the river cascaded over a cliff into Mor Sarff, the Serpent Sea. The rest of the river disappeared into the deep dark, a place of mysteries and mazes that had never been fully mapped, not even by the Quicken-tree.
The boulders marked her father’s, Nemeton’s, southernmost path into Merioneth, a path he had laid with traces of magic, and ’twas with the antes magicae she had learned from him that she kept it open. She knelt dose to the cairn by the river’s edge and performed a ritual with fire, using the contents of the four pouches hanging from her belt. At the end of it, she spoke a few warding words and scattered forest debris over the small patch of scorched earth. ’Twas no safeguard against Rhuddlan discovering her trespass on his bramble, but ’twould hide it well enough from others. The Quicken-tree leader wouldn’t countenance her breach, and if he found the path, he could undo her spell with little more than a flick of his wrist. As quickly as that the stems would begin to turn and the branches wind around one another.
Damned elf-man. He was forever tripping her up.
She reached for another handful of twigs and leaves, but inadvertently dug too deep and came up with black muck as well.
A soft curse left her lips. Here was Rhuddlan’s true bane; the richness of summer had spilled over into rotting ripeness. Winter could come none too soon this year, nor the icy blasts of the north wind to freeze the blight from the earth.
She stared at the sodden remains of decayed vegetation, letting it drip from her open palm onto the ground where she’d made her elemental potion. Each drop sizzled and smoked as it hit the sanctified earth. Strange, wicked stuff, its presence in Riverwood kept Rhuddlan awake at night. Coupled with Mychael ab Arawn’s heated, nocturnal pacings, Carn Merioneth never knew a moment’s peace.
Rhuddlan was sending Mychael and the Liosalfar into the deep dark on the morrow to see what they could find. An ill-advised move, she’d argued. The youth’s time could be better spent with her, exploring Druid wisdoms and teachings. How else was he to learn to call the dragons and take his mother’s place? Or, she’d asked, did Rhuddlan now believe Druids to be as irrelevant as Men in the course he would take?
Damn Rhuddlan. He would have them all slip into the mi
sts and no longer move even through the shadows of men’s lives, and a graver error he hardly could make. For all his great knowledge of the past, Rhuddlan knew little about the future, and ’twas that aspect of the world that she would protect. The ways must be left open. ’Twas her duty and her desire.
As to the deep dark, she already knew what they would find: worms still churning, things still coming undone, the scrying pool lifeless and murky and useless for her needs. ’Twould take more than warriors and a wild boy to unriddle Riverwood’s malady.
In truth, ’twould take the Prydion Mage, Ailfinn Mapp.
Another curse escaped her. She would have to be on her guard with that one running loose in Merioneth.
Leaning forward, she immersed her hand in the river and watched as the last of the black rot was washed into the current and carried downstream. Change and turmoil were afoot in the deep earth, a new chaos that she feared had been loosed when Ceridwen and Dain Lavrans had freed the pryf; a chaos that seeped upward into the light of day, bringing the rot and wildness. Five months had passed since the emerald seal had been broken and the gate of the pryf’s prison opened. Five months and still the worms turned deep in the earth, the frenzy of the prifarym having abated not one whit. Five months of things coming undone, and of Madron’s growing doubts as to the wisdom of their deed.
Five months, and still Rhuddlan was a dragon keeper with no dragons to keep, and with no priestess from the ancient line of Merioneth to call them home. Rhiannon was dead. Ceridwen had taken herself north with Lavrans.
Rhiannon’s son, Mychael, could do it—she would swear by him—if he would but give himself over to Druid teachings.
The corruption thinned out into gelatinous strings before slipping over the last of the river rock and disappearing beneath the giant’s cairn, returning from whence it had come. Mychael ab Arawn had been there, traveling the caverns and the deep dark alone for months before the battle for Balor, a feat no Quicken-tree could match. He’d seen fissuring in the damson shafts—dread augery—and met the old worm. He’d been in the wormholes and discovered the secret of dreamstone. And he’d survived, proving himself to be far more than she’d thought.
