by Terry Madden
“The hayloft is warm enough,” the alewife said. “I’ll bring ye food—”
“And news,” Lyleth said. “Talan’s army lies outside these walls, and I expect they’ll be trying to get in shortly. In the meantime, I’ll need four more sheaves of arrows with bodkin points—”
“Demanding, aren’t we?”
“Fiach gave you gold. Spend some. And get a sword for him,” Lyleth nodded at Connor. As Dylan grew stronger, Connor had been only too happy to hand over the one rusty sword they possessed to him. It would certainly do Connor no good.
“I don’t think I need—”
“And you’ll draw no attention in the gathering of these goods,” Lyleth said.
“Who do ye think I am?”
“You’re in the service of your lord, Fiach. And he’s paid you for your troubles.”
With a scowl, she pointed out a basket of food and the ladder up to the loft and went on her way, saying, “I’ll have the goods by nightfall.”
Daylight shone on Connor’s wound, allowing Lyleth to examine it more thoroughly. The bleeding hadn’t slowed. It was like he was a hemophiliac or something. While Connor struggled to remain conscious, she sent Dylan into town for a long list of healer-type supplies. By noon she had packed the gash with a foul-smelling concoction and stitched the skin closed over it. Connor screamed into the fabric of his cloak as she sewed. He was pretty sure zombies didn’t feel pain, so it was reassuring in a masochistic way that he could feel every stab of the needle. When she’d finished with the torture, it appeared the bleeding had slowed, but not stopped.
“The dead don’t heal, I suppose,” Dylan observed.
“You’re a genius,” Connor managed to say.
He slept through the afternoon and the night and was awakened by Brixia’s high whinny. It was morning again, and Lyleth and Dylan had gone off somewhere, maybe in search of more weapons. How could they have gone and left him?
He crawled to the edge of the loft and looked down at Brixia. She had escaped her stall, or someone had let her out. She was gazing fixedly up at the loft and pacing. “If you keep this up,” he told her, “everyone in town will know I’m here. Where are they anyway?”
He inspected the bandage and saw a moderate blotch of red. Certainly not like it was before. He’d have to quiet Brixia somehow.
The ladder had an elastic bounce to it and threatened to dump him. When he finally reached the bottom, he removed the ladder and hid it in one of the stalls. Then he followed Brixia into her enclosure and shut the gate. She had some fresh straw there, and if he pressed his back to the wattle wall, he was out of sight if someone were to walk in.
Which they did, not minutes later.
He heard men’s voices and thought at first it was the alewife’s son. But no, he knew those voices. The men he’d met up with in the tavern, the ones who were looking for Lyl.
One of them had found the ladder and hoisted it up to the loft. He carried that long dinner knife, and when he reached the top rung, he looked down into Brixia’s stall. Connor looked back up at him.
“Well now—” was all he managed to say before an arrow thumped and burst through his chest. He fell in slow motion, crashing through the gate of Brixia’s stall. Horses reared and cried and charged about.
By the time Connor got to his feet, Dylan had blocked the door and faced the second guy, the big one with the body odor. He’d have to get past Dylan and his sword to get away, but Connor wondered if Dylan could even swing the thing. He’d been stabbed less than two weeks earlier.
From behind Dylan, Lyl drew her bow again and aimed at the man. “Who sent you?” she asked him.
When he failed to answer, she said, “Is it worth dying to protect who hired you?”
When he failed to answer again, Dylan cracked him in the face with the hilt of his sword. The guy doubled over and went to his knees.
“All right,” he cried, holding his nose. “She didn’t pay me enough to die. I’ll say if you let me go.”
“Who?” Lyl asked again.
“A woman with weird eyes. One o’each color. And a necklace made of claws.”
“Get out,” Lyleth said.
The man wasted no time. He left the barn holding his bloody nose. His friend hadn’t died yet, so Lyleth propped him up against the wall and left him to it.
“And now we need to go,” Dylan said, sheathing his sword.
**
With Fiach’s money, Lyl managed to buy a two-wheeled pony trap with a short bed and high plank sides. The wheels looked like they were about to fall off, but the contraption was big enough to stash their weapons and still have enough room for Connor to curl up inside under a tarp. Though Brixia was free, he knew she would be following right behind them. People who had seen them enter the city would undoubtedly recognize the pony. Getting out the gate without anyone recognizing them might require some Jedi mind tricks.
His wish was granted when the guard asked them no questions but ordered them to go on their way. Lyl told Connor later that the guards were clearly under order to let her pass. He even checked the tattoo on her arm to be sure. It appeared Fiach had thought of everything.
Connor couldn’t see what was going on out there, but after they had exited the gate, the cart took a sharp left, and the horses moved into a trot. He imagined the sea of soldiers outside the gate, Talan’s army. Wouldn’t they stop the cart and ask questions?
But the horses never slowed, and Connor was bumped and jostled against the sides of the cart as if they moved over a rough road.
When they finally stopped, Connor climbed out from under the tarp to see they were at the edge of a forest. “Where are we?”
“We can hide here,” Lyleth said. “Until we know what will happen next. These woods extend over the hills all the way to the sea.”
“What if we were followed?”
“Why would anyone follow a farmer and his load?”
Connor climbed from the wagon and looked down the road. The town and the fortress looked like models from here, and Talan’s army clustered around fires arranged in an arc outside the city walls. They clearly kept a distance that would keep them out of bowshot from the walls of the city.
Connor’s thoughts turned to war. If Fiach chose to hold Talan prisoner, he could only hold out as long as his walls held. But Lyleth had sent someone north with news of her hive’s destruction and Talan’s madness. Would they come?
“What if that woodsman did take your message to the northern tribes?” Connor asked her.
“Then perhaps we stand some chance here. But Nesta may have seen to him, cut his throat not minutes after I left his holding.”
“The Old Blood might take up our banner,” Dylan added.
“What banner?” Lyleth turned and headed for the wall of trees. “We’re alone in this. We serve no lord.”
“Not if Nechtan comes with the Old Blood,” Connor called after her.
“The moon is full tonight,” Lyleth declared. “We’ll see if your friend Merryn spoke the truth. And we’ll learn what there is to learn in these blades we carry. Now, what is it we need to do?”
Connor listed the herbs and woods that Merryn had told him must be placed in the fire as the full moon rises. He had always wondered why she’d been so adamant that he memorize these things. Did she know this day would come? That Connor would be here with Lyleth, both of them holding soothblades?
“Something called bryony,” Connor told Lyleth, “and rowan and aspen and, of course, blackthorn wood.” The blackthorn tree was always associated with dark magic in Celtic myth. It made him wonder if what they prepared to do was on that end of the magic spectrum. At this point, he didn’t really care. He went on, “Deadnettle, cuckoo flower and hellebore…”
It took Lyleth and Dylan the better part of the day to find and collect the required flora. As the sun began to set, the stacks of green wood and herbs beside Connor had begun to wilt. He watched the sun travel the sky from the shade of a dense grove of
ash. He felt Merryn in the woods. He searched the trees for an oak sapling that might be the one that bore her soul across the Void to this world. Would he know her if he saw her?
The trees whispered with the breath of wind that wandered from the plain below. Connor could hear their voices and understand their speech. What was it they said? He struggled to hang on to their words, struggled to hear Merryn’s voice among them.
Then he awoke.
Brixia stood over him like a sentinel. The wind dandled the leaves above him, and the trees laughed. He knew deep inside that he would never know the peace of this moment ever again.
Lyleth was staring at him. “We’re ready,” she said.
**
The forest was the perfect place to bleed to death. Connor had grown weaker throughout the day.
As the sun set, driving bright rays of red light through the trees, Lyleth struck a flint to light the pile of leaves and blooms and twigs as the last of the light faded.
The smell of the smoke was like incense. Not that cheap incense that comes in sticks, but the expensive stuff. Connor even felt like it made him a little high. It was either the smoke or loss of blood, or both.
As the moon rose on the opposite horizon from the setting sun, the fire was blazing and dropping a bed of hot coals.
“Now we put the blades into the coals,” Connor instructed, hearing Merryn in his head tell him there had to be coals.
The climb of the moon through the trees was quick, but Connor’s blade began to glow like green phosphor, and Lyleth’s did the same beside his.
“Now what?” she asked.
Together, they gripped the hot bone hilts of their blades and brought them out of the coals. “Hold it before your eyes, to the moonlight,” Connor said.
As he did, he could feel the heat radiate from it, the dark fractures in the world inside the stone pulsed and spidered outward. A beam of green pain pierced his eyes, and he was standing inside the green, in the middle of a stream, and each time he reached into the water, he picked up a green stone. Each stone opened like a flower, and when he looked into it, he stepped into a different life, into a different memory, complete and hyperreal. It became painfully clear… this wasn’t Merryn’s life he watched. It was his own. With every stone he touched, the canvas of his soul took on shape and color, the color of blood, and domination, and regret.
The keening of countless mothers met his ears as the king passed the cup of blood to Connor.
He took it and dipped his fingers into the warm stickiness, he measured the infinite potential of shaping the primordial essence that sundered the living from the dying, the sleeping from the waking, the twisted from the straight.
He called forth a new order.
And set his fingers to the canvas of flesh before him to reshape a life.
Chapter 21
Leaving Bronwyn on the sofa, Dish closed the distance between the drawing room and the front door as quickly as he could. Mr. Peavey stood at the door with Connor’s rucksack in his hand. It was clear that he had hidden it from Inspector Trewin and his officers, but why? Iris was frozen with one hand on the door and one hand pushing her hair back.
“Well, fuck!” she cried, backing away from the man.
“Thank you, Mr. Peavey,” Dish said, taking the offered bag as he reached the door. “Please excuse Iris, she’s been under some stress—”
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Iris said to Peavey. “I was with Connor that day at the hot tub. The day you took him across to find Dish.” She pointed at Dish.
“I’d best get to work,” Peavey said, with a touch of his cap.
“Oh, no, no,” Iris insisted, moving to take Peavey’s arm, but then stepping away again, taking Dish’s arm instead. “Dish, this guy is not a guy. He’s a guardian. The guardian that set you up. The one from the well on the beach, and the one that was at the hot tub.”
“What are you talking about, Iris? Mr. Peavey has worked for Merryn for ye—”
“Worked for her!” Iris cried. “Of course! He was working for her even then. Ned. That’s his name. Or at least, it was. And he demanded that Connor give him the book before he would take him across. The book, Dish!” She tried to indicate the book he had hidden under his bum.
“Will you come in, Mr. Peavey?” Dish asked.
The man hesitated, his eyes flitting from Iris to Dish. He removed his cap and clutched it before him. As he did, his look subtly changed. He wasn’t a different man, but he was a different version of the man. And Dish thought he saw the flash of gold in his eyes. Dish had never met the man called Ned so he would not recognize him. But Iris certainly would. And if Peavey was a guardian, then the location of the well must be known to him.
Peavey stepped into the foyer.
“I know what Merryn had planned for me,” Dish said to him. “I know the child was the goal of the trap you laid with the well on the beach. Jolly good, you caught me. But my child is alive in that world, carrying out whatever the gods have planned for her, and I am now a helpless bystander. I can’t blame you for being loyal to Merryn—”
“What child?” Bronwyn called from the drawing room. “And what book?”
“Mr. Peavey…” Dish began.
“Call me Ned. The girl’s right. And I expect you have some questions.”
Mr. Peavey, Ned, accepted a cup of tea and took a chair in the drawing room. Dish didn’t want this to turn into an interrogation.
Iris didn’t sit. She paced, as if she would stop Peavey from bolting if he tried. And Bronwyn poured herself another glass of whisky.
Dish didn’t know where to start. But the questions poured forth, and if body language was the same for guardians as humans, Ned was being fairly honest in his replies. He confirmed Dish’s suspicions that Merryn wasn’t out to open the well, but to hide it.
“It’s what I been trying to tell ye,” he said. “’Twas her sacred duty, for if the Sunless cross, they’ll take the land from both the Ildana and the Old Blood. They wield strong blood magic, like we never seen before. They’ve become more powerful than even the druada of the Old Blood,” Peavey explained. “And when Angharad opens the well, the third epoch will begin.”
Third epoch? Dish had never heard of such a term. “Then why did you and Merryn set this in motion? Why did you send me back to engender this child if you knew what would come?”
“Because she wanted to—to shape it,” Peavey said, searching for words. “She knew when the time was right, when the right people were where they should be, when destiny was ready to be served.” He used the Ildana word for destiny, tyngeda, which carried a meaning unknown in English. But the word resonated in the shared mind of Dish and Nechtan. It meant the cumulative experiences of a soul’s many incarnations leading to a single moment in time.
“I wanted to tell you,” Ned continued. “I wanted to let you know about the people coming to the stream. They know it’s coming.”
“What’s coming?” Bronwyn asked, slurring her words.
“The opening of the well,” Ned said to Bronwyn. “See, the Old Blood are not all sweetness and light, as your Aunt Merryn would have you believe. There are those who practice a dark magic and follow their twisted king, the Crooked One—”
“The Sunless,” Dish said. He pulled the book from under his bum and held it up. “They were after the book because it shows the location of the well. So you took it from Connor to be sure they wouldn’t get their hands on it. Because you and Merryn have always known where the well is. It’s right here on Merryn’s farm.”
“And now they know too. It’s why they’ve been snooping around here.”
Just then, the front door opened. Elowen stepped inside, clutching a large handbag to her chest. Her cheeks were pink as if from exertion, and there were leaves in her hair.
“They’re gone?” she asked.
“And she’s come at last,” Peavey said in Ildana, standing and showing his palms in reverence to Elowen. “And so we know the time is
soon. Very soon.”
“Who’s come?” Dish asked.
Ned pointed at the wriggling handbag. “The guardian of the third well.”
“I thought you were the well guardian,” Dish said.
“Not of that well. Hell, that’s a job no one would want. It’s why Merryn trapped her in a jar for all these years. To keep her safe, away from the Sunless, until the time came.”
“And the time has come,” Dish stated.
“Sure as hell looks that way.”
“Whatever is about to happen,” Bronwyn stated, “I think I need more whisky.”
**
Bronwyn had found an unopened bottle of Merryn’s favorite, Two Blind Dogs Scotch Whisky, stashed in the closet not far from the salamander. She poured everyone a glass, and they sat around the small table by the sofa like conspirators. Dish drew the curtains, uncertain if any of the Sunless would try to see what was happening in the cottage.
“She’s calmed down somewhat now,” Elowen smiled. She had been hiding down by the brook as the police searched the house and barn. Now, she set the handbag on the table, and the creature peeked out. Just its head showed.
Bronwyn clutched her glass and got up from the sofa. “I’ll be in the bedroom if you need me.”
Elowen said, “She’s not Ceinwen. Her stars are different.”
“Who’s Ceinwen?” Ned asked.
“The salamander Angharad found in Caer Ys. She found it in a jar, not unlike the one this one was trapped in. It was on a shelf in the room that once belonged to the soulstalker. The one who…” Elowen’s eyes found Dish. He saw they were filled with tears. “The one who killed my king. Nechtan.”
“The guardian’s sister,” Ned declared with undisguised joy. “And the child has the salamander with her?”
“Aye,” Elowen said.
Dish, or Nechtan, remembered Irjan’s room well, though he purposely never went in. It reeked of death, of countless beings, all ground between pestle and mortar into dust. Dish translated for Iris as best he could. She had taken Bronwyn’s seat on the sofa and now stared at the creature with furrowed brow.
