Three Wells of the Sea Series Box Set: Three Wells of the Sea and The Salamander's Smile

by Terry Madden

  “You’ve been likewise trained in medicinals?” Talan asked the lovely nursemaid named Elowen, who like him, merely watched from the doorway.

  “Aye, my lord. Six years of such.” She did not meet his eyes when she spoke.

  “Six years you’ve been a bee in Lyleth’s hive. You must know much then.”

  Fear flashed in her eyes. What was it she really knew? Did she plan to poison him as Irjan had poisoned Nechtan? The idea made him laugh aloud. He said, “My little cousin was born with such knowledge it would seem, and I would imagine she required little training.”

  “Aye, my lord.”

  Angharad pointed to a jar on a high shelf. “Can you fetch that down for me?”

  Talan retrieved it, gray with dust, and handed it to her. She pulled the cork and removed some with the tip of a knife she’d found on the table. She sniffed it and offered Elowen the opportunity to do the same.

  “Heliotrope,” Elowen said.

  “I shall mix it with the skullcap, here.” Angharad pointed at another jar.

  “Why not white poppy?” Elowen asked.

  “My cousin has visitors enough. Poppy would only bring more.”

  Angharad glanced up at him as if for confirmation. So, she had seen the little man upon his tongue. Why had she not said so?

  Talan had started out of the room when Angharad said, “Reach that jar for me, cousin. Just there.” She pointed at what must have been a clear glass container once, but was now veiled in dust like everything else.

  Talan had to stand on a stool to reach it. Too heavy to be picked up with one hand, he cradled it against his chest, dirtying his robe. But when he brushed off the dust, he saw an eye blink at him. He bobbled the jar but didn’t drop it, and the thing inside shifted, its black skin coiled so tightly inside the jar, it was a wonder it could move at all.

  He handed it to Angharad. “What is it?”

  “Have you never seen a salamander? Trapped these six years and more, no doubt.”

  “Still alive?” Elowen asked.

  “Poor thing,” Angharad cooed through the glass. “You must be hungry, aye. I shall find you a fat worm or two.”

  Hugging the jar, she smiled up at Talan and led the way from the room.

  “I shall bring sleep to you in but a few minutes, cousin. After I fetch some honey from the kitchen.”

  **

  The servants had lit new rushlights and his bedchamber once again pulsed with golden light. He returned to his bed, feeling the bulge of the little man beating against his belly. Was this what pregnant women felt? If he could shit this creature out, he would do so.

  Angharad entered without a knock.

  “Your sleep will be deep and restful,” she said, sitting beside him on the edge of the bed. “Drink this.”

  She held out a tiny cup that smelled of cat piss and honey.

  “Did you see him?” he asked before drinking it.

  She took his hand in hers. A warm, soft, damp child’s hand. “Are you afraid, cousin?” she asked him.

  “Did you see him?”

  “I see that you are tormented. That I see clearly.”

  He drank down the terrible medicine and handed the cup back to her. “What should I fear with you at my side?”

  He turned her hand palm up and ran his fingers over the new tattoo of the water horse on her little wrist, still pink with tenderness. How could he have forgotten they’d gone through the binding ceremony? How long had he been back at Caer Ys? She was his now, and he was hers. Just as every king and solás before him, just as Lyleth and Nechtan had been.

  “Don’t you fear the god you serve?” she asked.

  “I serve no god, green or otherwise.”

  “Ah, but you do. His messenger has found you. He’s burrowed into you like a worm burrows into a fallen apple. What is it the leech-soul tells you to do?”

  “’Go to the Red Bog,’ is what he tells me. ‘Your lord awaits. He hungers.’” His belly growled in response. “Tell me how to cast him out.”

  She regarded him with a face that belonged to an ancient, and said, “It will hurt.”

  “So be it.”

  **

  The fast weakened him. Nothing but a boiled concoction of herbs that Angharad had cooked up had passed his lips, and she sang to him, an incessant hymn that had no end in a language he could not understand, full of notes that sounded discordant to his ears.

  When the child had left him for the night, Rhun protested, saying, “You should not trust the child. She’d as well poison you as not. She has a claim to your throne, you know, my lord.”

  “Let her mix her worst.”

  At the end of the third day, Angharad led him to the shore of the bay, to the foot of the cliffs surrounding Caer Ys. He felt as though his feet met an unseen ground that rose higher than the path. He was treading another path, in a different land and his mind was nothing but an incessant whisper over the shoulder of the little man. They had become one. Digging the roots of a tree from the flesh of a corpse would be easier than untangling the two souls that fought over his sorry flesh.

  He stumbled.

  The man Lyleth had sent to watch over the child caught him. Dylan his name was. Talan had a distant memory of getting into a scrap with him on the battlefield. He was an insolent, rash peasant boy and was not to be trusted, that one. The little man had told him so.

  “I remember you,” he told Dylan who had a firm grip on Talan’s arm. “You tried to punch me in the face.”

  “You’ve a good memory, my lord. In fact, I believe I succeeded.” Was that a smug smile turning the corners of the man’s mouth? If Talan were stronger, he’d bloody him now.

  He could only say, “I feel certain you will keep my little cousin safe. You have been with Lyleth since the battle in Cedewain?”

  “Since my lord, Nechtan, died. Aye.”

  “You grieve for him still.”

  “I shall always grieve for him, my lord.” Perhaps the little man was right for once. Dylan was not to be trusted.

  Once they reached the strand, Angharad ordered a hole dug just beyond the reach of the tide, and as the galling tune played on, she tossed herbs and stones into the hole. Who played the harp? The notes were needles of ice sliding beneath the chitinous crust of Talan’s skin.

  Try, try to hurt me, ye’ll find ‘tis not to be! The little man’s voice belched from Talan’s throat, and his eyes rolled up into his head. He clawed at his chest until someone clutched his arms and tied them behind his back.

  Talan landed face-first in the sand. The grains pressed against his open eyes, but he could not close them.

  Then they were dragging him into the sea. The touch of the water was nothing but a distant chill, the sting of saltwater up his nose was a draught of cleansing potion. It ran down his throat, and he vomited into the waves.

  Dylan planted a hand on his head and forced him under. He gulped in the sea, and everything became still. Through the watery greenscape, he saw figures move, dancing in the shafts of sunlight. Souls of the unborn waiting to come to shore.

  How he wanted to join them.

  He surfaced, choking. Dylan’s fingers were knotted in Talan’s hair, and he could see Angharad on the shore, pouring oil over the things in the hole.

  Dylan left him at the water’s edge, half weightless in the surf, and half heavier than a warhorse. He could not crawl, he could not breathe. And the little man cried out with Talan’s lungs, Your green gods will fall!

  Angharad set the things ablaze, and flames leapt out of the hole, issuing from the void between worlds. She smothered the blaze with a bundle of green leaves until nothing but pungent fumes remained.

  His skin felt crisp like roasted boar, yet he hadn’t drawn near the fire yet.

  “Put him in,” she ordered Dylan.

  Die, witch! the little man screamed, forcing Talan’s mouth open so wide he felt his jaw pop, his teeth lengthen into fangs. He smelled the child’s flesh and wanted nothing more than t
o taste it, but he was held fast by Dylan who threw him feet first into the hole.

  His feet were on fire as Elowen and Dylan raced to dig a trench in the sand, a circle about an arm’s length deep. A wave came in and filled the hole, and Talan cried out as the thing inside twisted, larva in a cocoon, wriggling to be free. But his skin hardened into a shell, and the little man laughed, Get ye to the Red Bog. Your lord hungers, and none but he can set ye free.

  His nose filled with vapors rising through the sand from the smoldering herbs. The tide came and went, and Talan slept, buried, nothing but his head in this world, dreaming that he shat a room full of blood. Angharad was still singing. She dribbled water between Talan’s parched lips, but the little man hammered on his tongue, danced a jig, singing over Angharad’s tune, Take us to the Red Bog. He hungers, and none but he can set ye free.

  “In one cycle of the moon,” Angharad whispered to him, “the Hunter will carry a red star aloft. Only then will the old god be stirred. Only then will the well be opened.”

  He opened his eyes to find no one there. Nothing but the sea hissing before him.

  Inside the chrysalis of his skin, his bones shifted like wings.

  Chapter 5

  The next day, Lyleth sat on the cliff above the cove, watching the sea and listening to the sky, waiting for a fishing scow to put in to trade. Breaca arrived with a basket of smoked salmon and nut bread.

  “Angharad is old for her years,” Breaca said in a reassuring tone. She took a seat in the grass beside Lyleth. “She’ll know what she must do.”

  “He killed his solás,” Lyleth proclaimed.

  “Pyrs said she died in battle.”

  Lyleth shook her head. “She died at the hands of her king. I saw it, Breaca. And he’ll kill Angharad if she fails him.”

  “What can you do?”

  Lyleth and Nechtan had been used by the green gods to bring forth this child. How could Angharad’s destiny lie with such as Talan? How could this be the fate the green gods had prepared for her? Lyleth refused to believe it. She was done protecting Talan. It was time the judges of the Wildwood knew how Nechtan had died, how Maygan had died.

  “I’ll take the first boat to the mainland,” Lyleth told Breaca. “You’ll lead the hive in my place.”

  “And if you do nothing more than anger the king? What then?”

  “Then I’ll steal her from him and flee.”

  Breaca scoffed, “You’ll get both of you killed. Bide your time.”

  “I’ll bide nothing.”

  The next day, Lyleth boarded a small fishing scow and set off across the strait to the mainland of Arvon. She dismissed any thought of appealing to Pyrs, the chieftain there. He’d already proven his allegiance to Talan, had made no protest when Angharad was taken.

  She traded one of the silver ingots Talan had left for a horse, and started south. When possible, she stayed off the road, for a woman traveling alone was never safe. She kept her bow strung and a sword on her belt, and made camp far enough from the road that no one would see her fires. She took up with a tinker and his family for some time, and when they reached a village, she divined the clouds in exchange for food and a barn for her horse. Try as she might, the clouds revealed nothing of her own future.

  In a fortnight, she reached the edge of the Wistwood.

  Lyleth slipped the bridle off her horse and left it with the saddle under a beech tree. If the horse was still here when she returned, so be it. She ran her hand down the mare’s bony face and whispered her thanks, explaining she could move faster through the trackless wood on foot. There were trails, but she had to find them first.

  She took her initial bearing from the sun, knowing the nemeton lay southeast, but once she was swallowed by thicket and grove, she was forced to trust the growth of moss to direct her. By midday, she was lost. She sat down with her back to a rowan tree and opened the eyes of the forest, the great soul that dreamed the world. Through their roots and leaves, she whispered to the greenmen who guarded the wood. It wasn’t long before they replied, and found her.

  Two of them appeared, wrapped in the mossy cloaks of their order, their hoods pulled low so she could not tell if they were male or female.

  “You’re lost, traveler,” one said.

  “I seek the judges.” She showed the mark of the water horse on her wrist, and they showed their palms in respect.

  “What injustice has troubled you, solás?” By the look of this one’s hands, he was male and the elder of the two.

  “More than one,” she replied. “I seek the judgment of the nine.”

  “Stars and stones grant you that and more.” He handed her a grain sack, which she knew to pull over her head, for the way to the nemeton was known only by the few who served the trees. Not even a druí such as Lyleth was allowed to know the way.

  With a light touch on her arm, they allowed her to see the trail beneath her feet through their eyes, but nothing more than that. Logs to traverse, stream crossings on moss-slick rocks. She had grown weary of concentrating when at last they removed the sack. She stood on a forested ridge. Below lay a crescent-shaped vale sheltered by rocky crags. The crowns of the nine trees of the nemeton, as tall as the ridge, swayed in a slow dance, creaking in the gusts that threaded through the wood.

  Standing before the oak stump that guarded the way into the nemeton, she began to feel the effects of weeks of travel, her soul flitting about her like a bee. The Cernos, the stump was called. Stag horns had been fitted into the brow and garlands of wilting flowers were draped over it. The hollow “O” of its mouth held berries and meat as if the stump could eat. It did nothing but draw flies.

  A greenman placed a jug in her hand, and she joined the supplication in the tongue of the Old Blood, “Blood of wood, blood of man, joined by the roots of time, protect us.”

  Could they feel her contempt for the gods who had betrayed her? There was no hiding it. She could only hope their justice was not selectively distributed.

  She stoked her defiance and silently goaded the green god, challenging the Cernos to prevent her passage, to devour her as he was said to do with those of false heart. But his unblinking eyes of smooth black stones simply watched her walk past.

  In the bowl of the valley, the nine ancients slept through a still twilight, the scent of their green exhalations sharp with sap and spring budding. Rowan, oak, ash, hazel, yew, hawthorn, alder, holly, apple. Trees understand that men are as short-lived as the flies that buzz about the mouth of the Cernos, aware of nothing but our brief glimpse of the vastness of true existence. The trees cared for Lyleth’s problems no more than the flies.

  The judges, brehons, met her in the stone circle that lay in the shadow of the trees. Young and old, men and women, eight of them had been chosen by the divination of the High Brehon, an aging man who reminded Lyleth of a warbler, his nose a sharp pointed beak and his eyes full of worry.

  “Come, solás.” He offered her his hand. “You must be hungry.”

  He led the way to their dwelling, a cave not far from the grove. Her hand in his allowed him to probe her intentions. She opened her mind and heart wide to his scrutiny. Let him see her distrust for his green gods and the path she had forged alone in this world.

  A single long table occupied the damp cavern. The chamber was lit by a hole in the rock above, allowing sunlight to filter through like golden pollen.

  “Tell us why you’ve come, solás.” The High Brehon motioned for her to take a seat at the table, she on one end and he on the other. The eight sat four on either side.

  The High Brehon seemed carved from an ancient branch himself, and for a moment, Lyleth thought she knew him as she took the offered bowl of nettle soup. Had he studied with her at the isle? Or had they met when she served in Nechtan’s court?

  “I seek justice.” She’d had two weeks of hard travel to prepare her case, and it spilled out now. “Talan is king because he slew Nechtan. He ran his own uncle through with a spear, there on the battlefield. And n
ow he’s killed his own solás, Maygan, and taken a child to serve him instead. My child.” She met the eyes of each judge in turn, measuring their response which they hid with expert dispassion. “Is it lawful for a man to murder his king and take his throne?”

  “You witnessed this murder?” the High Brehon asked.

  “Nechtan’s harp. The harp of the drowned maid. Before I cut the strings, it named Talan as his killer.”

  The High Brehon’s eyebrows humped up in bushy gray surprise, the first hint of a response she’d gotten.

  “When the king dies, by whatever means,” he proclaimed, “the throne belongs to his kin, and Talan was the only kin left of Nechtan’s. If this were not the case, the Five Quarters would be pitched into civil war.”

  One of the eight spoke up. “Talan’s right to rule was what you fought for when you raised an army against Ava, wasn’t it?” The speaker was a woman about Lyleth’s age. Tall and long-faced, her eyes, anything but deeply set, were mismatched, one an unsettling violet blue and the other dark brown. The difference in color made the blue eye appear larger than the other, putting Lyleth in mind of the Hound of Cellamor that raced with the Wild Hunt, its pale eye seeing this world, while the dark eye saw the other.

  Lyleth sensed that whatever she said would be twisted by this woman. “Would you have preferred I handed the Five Quarters over to the Bear?”

  The woman with the strange eyes went on, “Nechtan was not dead when you found him, yet he did not tell you who cast the spear. Why do you think that was so?”

  Lyleth didn’t like the answer this green sister was searching for. “Perhaps he himself did not know.”

  The wild-eyed woman shook her head. “Or perhaps it was because he would do nothing to subvert the hope he placed in his nephew. He hoped Talan would be the king that he was not. And your motherly selfishness has obscured your prudence, sister.”

  The High Brehon added, “Nesta is saying that we all must do what is best for the land.”

  “You’re sworn to uphold the law of the Ildana.”