Prince of Time

by Tara Janzen

  She’d been wrong in that. Here she was, still in Claerwen, and the only thing holding her up was Morgan, his one arm around her, their other hands entwined and held close between their breasts. He was frightened, too, but he wasn’t trembling like she was.

  With a spoken command, the High Priestess set the Sha-shakrieg weavers to work, spinning a chrysalis for Avallyn and Morgan. They used golden pryf silk, the rarest kind, from the time worms themselves. One by one, the threads were thrown, each with a word of power first recited in the ancient, star-wrought desert of Deseillign: bh’ismi’llah... ahl’el-ard... salema, hamdy, khothra.

  The threads did not touch Morgan and Avallyn, but circled in lazy, twisting spirals from their heads to their feet, intertwining, passing one through the other, shining like thin ropes of pure light.

  Four lightning bolts hit the canyon walls in quick succession, creating a deafening crack of sound. For a moment afterward, all was quiet on the platform except for the chanting of the priestesses.

  It wouldn’t be long now.

  Avallyn looked up to the dark sky and saw the clouds begin to roll back. They turned in upon themselves, tumbling backward, opening a hole into deep space. Stars shown in the opening, a dark sea of tranquil eternity lit with spots of light, the whole of it floating in the midst of the lightning’s ring of chaos.

  “Morgan.” She bade him look up and see the path they would follow.

  “Aye,” he said, and she heard the soft confidence in his voice.

  The threads spun and spun, around and around, drawing the two of them closer and closer together and farther and farther from the world. One of the stars above grew bigger, and brighter, and more golden with each passing breath.

  A great crash of stone and timbers and the cries of a battle fully engaged announced the Warmonger’s entrance onto the platform, but it seemed to be happening in another age. Avallyn looked once as the sound of her name ricocheted off the canyon walls in a raspy, anguished scream, and saw legions of soldiers and skraelings pouring out of a great rent in the eastern gallery. She saw the giant, Jons, and Ferrar break through the Warmonger’s lines to the safety of the priestesses’ wall—and she saw Corvus Gei, whirling and running in a strange forward motion toward her and Morgan, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake, his body half obscured by a veil of dark, twisting smoke, his mouth a gaping maw of pure blackness screaming her name.

  He was too late... late... late...

  Her gaze drifted back to the center of her world—Morgan. His eyes were as dark as the sky and filled with as many stars. Smiling, he lowered his mouth to hers, and she parted her lips to receive his kiss. Aye, he was the Prince of Time, and they were on their way to the stars.

  In a blinding flash of golden light, they were gone.

  ~ ~ ~

  In the year 1208 A.D., in Wydehaw Castle in South Wales, Mychael ab Arawn woke at his wife’s startled gasp, instantly alert, his hand on the dagger he kept by the bed. Moonlight poured in through the window, pouring a milky river of light across the floor. He saw nothing, sensed nothing, and in truth it would take an exceedingly brave man or a totally deranged fool to attempt thievery or mayhem in the Hart Tower, especially with the lord in residence. Everyone knew the power wielded by the mages of the Hart and the Druid Door.

  “Llynya?” He turned to the woman by his side. Wide eyes stared up at him, unreadable in the darkness, but he felt her fear, could almost hear the pounding of her heart.

  “Oh, Mychael.” She covered her face with her hands and rolled closer to him.

  “What is it, love? Tell me.” He helped her to a sitting position and drew her securely into his embrace. She’d made a man of him a long time ago, and he knew the comfort she would take from the warmth of his body, from his strength and the solid beating of his heart.

  “Morgan.” The name was a pained sigh, breathed against his chest.

  Morgan.

  There was only one, Morgan ab Kynan, his cousin. Morgan had been lost in the weir ten years ago, during the battle for Balor. He’d been under Llynya’s protection when Caradoc’s blade had delivered its final blow, and the connection she shared with Morgan had caused her to suffer his fall through time—hours, sometimes days, when she, too, had felt the land and the sky slip away from her, moments when she’d found no purchase on earth, but had been suspended in awful limbo.

  “You can feel him falling again?” He kept his voice calm, though he wanted to curse. Morgan was the one pain he couldn’t keep from her. In all his studies, he had yet to discover what tied his wife to the Thief of Cardiff, what could have bound them in such a manner; and even though he’d long thought the ordeal behind them, he had searched for an answer. Now, more than ever, he wished he’d found one.

  “Aye, but...” She took a deep breath, hesitating, as if unsure of what she felt. “But it’s not so terrible this time. It startled me when I first felt it, but he’s not afraid, Mychael. I think... I think he’s coming home.”

  “It’s been ten years,” he said doubtfully, even as he prayed it was true. ’Twould help solve the mystery, to have his cousin right at hand. And Llynya’s grief aside, Morgan had always been more of an adventurer than a scholar of esoteric sciences. Time travel could not have suited him overly well. For certes he’d had none of the necessary preparation when he’d fallen into the weir.

  He glanced down and found Llynya giving him a look of wifely exasperation. ’Twas the weir they were talking about, a wormhole that snaked across time and space as if both were naught. Ten years or ten hundred years were the same in the weir. Her expression, though, did much to ease his fears for her. She couldn’t be too frightened, if she was capable of exasperation.

  “We should be there when he comes through,” she said, her voice strengthening with conviction. “We should be there to meet him.”

  He brushed a long, silky lock of dark hair behind her faerie-like ear, dislodging half a dozen leaves with the gesture. Living with Llynya meant living with leaves, green leaves freshly budded in the spring, golden leaves to see her through autumn and the long winter. They all found a place in her hair, adorning her beauty with their own.

  She was right, of course. If Morgan was coming through the weir, they should—and would—be there, and Madron. Aye, the druid woman should be at the gates of time for the arrival of any traveler. With Llynya not in danger, Mychael was able to feel the wonder of her news. Morgan was coming home. For ten years, he’d been somewhere on the other side of time, and he would have stories to tell.

  “We’ll leave for Carn Merioneth at first light,” he said, allowing his gaze to drift to the curve of his wife’s bare breast. He’d seen many wondrous sights in the weir, and had learned of magic and miracles in Nemeton’s Hart Tower, but nothing compared to Llynya. She was so lovely by moonlight... by sunlight... in the deepest dark of night. After ten years, the smell and taste of her was part of him, his favorite part.

  He glanced at the foot of the Hart’s great bed, to the two towheaded children sprawled in deepest slumber amidst their blankets, his and Llynya’s five-year-old twins, Bran and Rhiannon. Two Merioneth hounds slept next to them, white levriers stretched out against the footboard. One tabby kitten lay in a curled-up pile next to Bran.

  He’d never thought to have so much, to have his life be so full. He’d never thought to have love, the kind of love Llynya showered on him and the children. He’d never thought to have fair-haired babes to crawl into his lap and give him sticky sweet kisses. Yet through the grace of God he’d been given his deepest heart’s desire, and every day he offered his thanks from his most pagan heart to the most Christian God he’d loved and followed in his youth.

  Aye, the prayers of childhood were still the path he took into the mysteries, and his love for Llynya was the path he took into his humanity. Given his dragonish proclivities, ’twas no small need he had of her.

  “Can you sleep now?” he asked, knowing she’d been tired of late.

  In answer, she
stretched against him, lifting her mouth to his.

  “Aye,” she whispered against his lips. “If you’ll love me, I’ll slip back into dreams.”

  He answered with a kiss, bearing her back onto the bed. Loving her was a dream, otherworldly with the magic of her touch, the dream he’d slipped into the first time he’d ever kissed a woman—her. The dream had deepened and grown richer with every passing day of the last ten years, a dream that would blossom again with the new child she carried. ’Twas a girl, she’d told him, and this child, she thought, would have the ears of her Yr Is-ddwfn mother.

  Chapter 24

  May 1208

  Carn Merioneth

  Merioneth, Wales

  Morgan awoke to the sound of water being poured, the smell of woodsmoke, and the certainty that Avallyn was still in his arms. Assured of her presence, he promptly drifted back into sleep, dreaming again of the weir—an endless passageway through time, a cosmic serpent over a million miles long with the marks of its own teeth in its tail, its entrails entwined, circling, ever circling, ever spiraling, and a thousand thousand time worms snaking across the universe and beyond, to places even his dreams weren’t allowed to go. The chrystaalt flowed into his cells, purifying every one, making them shine with the bioluminescence of the golden worm that carried them through the vortex. All was peace, and peace, and peace, and light.

  “We almost had him,” Llynya said to Moira, the Quicken-tree healer with her in the south tower. “I thought for certes he would stay with us a bit longer the next time he woke, he and his lady.” She looked to the woman sleeping by Morgan’s side, marveling at her countenance and her wild hair. She’d had a map on her when she’d come through the weir, and it named her Avallyn Le Severn, Priestess of the Bones and the Princess of the White Palace.

  Llynya knew the name. A man named Corvus Gei had once called Llynya “Avallyn” in a brambled glade in Riverwood, the forest outside Carn Merioneth’s walls. He had not seemed pleased to think Avallyn was in the woods with him. Madron, the Arch Druidess of Merioneth, and Naas, an ancient Quicken-tree seer, had sent Corvus down the wormhole after he’d revealed himself to be a felon from the future. Now it seemed that deed had come home to roost.

  “She’s one of yours and Mychael’s, without doubt,” Moira said. “I only wonder from how far down the family tree.”

  “The resemblance is amazing,” Llynya murmured, smoothing the woman’s golden hair back off her face. She could have been Llynya’s twin. Without doubt she was Morgan’s lover. Even in sleep, they breathed as one, curved toward each other, touching. Llynya often found them with their hands entwined.

  “Yr Is-ddwfn blood runs true. Just look at her ears,” Moira said. “She’s an aetheling, like you, definitely of royal blood, definitely Starlight-born. I think the thief went a very long way to find her.”

  “I do too,” Llynya murmured, taking the girl’s hand in her own. “I do too.”

  She adjusted the blankets back on the pair, leaving the golden net of silk threads closest to their bodies. En chrysalli, Moira had said, but with silk from the time worms themselves. Llynya remembered when the Liosalfar warrior, Nia, had been bound en chrysalli and taken by the Sha-shakrieg to Deseillign. Nia had survived her dreadful descent into the deep dark, but it had taken her many years to recover.

  As she tucked the blankets around Morgan, Llynya’s fingers grazed his chest and the sign of the leaf marked on his skin. She knew every leaf she’d ever been given, and Morgan’s was one of hers, or rather it had been. He must have taken it from her before he’d fallen into the weir. ’Twas what had bound them, Mychael believed. ’Twas what had saved him, Moira believed, being well versed in the sustaining powers of plants. For certes something had saved him. He’d had no chrystaalt before starting his journey across time, and the wounds he’d suffered had been mortal. The scars on his body defied survival, yet he had survived. In truth, Llynya thought she’d paid the smaller price of his fall, and if the rowan leaf had kept the magic of his life force alive, then she had not failed in her duty. In the end, she had guarded him well.

  “Pwr wa ladth. Pwr-rrr wa ladth,” she sang to the two, hoping to bring them out of their sleep. Run deep. Run deep.

  “Fai quall a’lommm-arian.” Wind through leaf, and stem, and root.

  “Es sho-leee-i par es cant.” Flow like a river into the earth.

  “Pwr-rrr wa ladth.” Run deep.

  ~ ~ ~

  When next Morgan woke, ’twas to the crackling sound of a fire and the smell of food, something warm and savory.

  He knew where he was. He knew exactly where he was: Carn Merioneth, Wales. He couldn’t have missed this place in a million years, let alone a mere ten thousand. He could hear the sea and smell it, a briny tang in the air.

  Beside him, Avallyn smelled green and warm. The firelight glimmered along her skin, turning it a rosy hue. He pressed a kiss to her brow, and she let out a soft sigh, shifting in her sleep to get closer to him.

  A smile graced his mouth. She was safe. They’d made it.

  Thus reassured, he let his gaze wander around the room.

  The walls were curved and made of stone, definitely one of Carn Merioneth’s towers. ’Twas night, and no lights shone through the narrow window or the open door.

  In the past, he’d never known much history beyond his lineage. In the future, he’d been bombarded with it. Every comstation was a database of the world’s comings and goings since before the emergence of life from the primordial ooze. There wasn’t a comstation in the room, nor were there any lamps or power-source mechanics of any kind. They’d definitely gone back far enough to predate electricity, and Morgan had a feeling they’d gone back a good deal farther.

  With a slight turn of his head, he shifted his gaze to the fire. A man sat next to the hearth, dressed in a dark tunic with a dark cloak wrapped loosely around his shoulders. He had one booted foot resting on a stool, his knee bent. The other leg was drawn up on the chair, his elbow resting on his knee. ’Twas a position of limber gracefulness, but not of disregard. There was a watchfulness about the man as he stared into the fire, an aura of energy carefully leashed. His hair was pulled back and tied at his nape, golden blond hair shot through with silver and strands of white and one broad band of brightest copper. The blaze was braided in five pieces, a fif braid.

  Morgan recognized him immediately. He was the image of his sister in masculine form, and he’d grown into a man since the last time Morgan had seen him. No boy bound by an oblate’s vows, but a man rebirthed in fire. Morgan had watched the deed in Tamisk’s pool.

  “Mychael,” he said, and the man turned. Pale gray eyes met his from across the room, steady and grave.

  “You’ve awakened.” Mychael rose to his feet, unfolding himself from the chair with a sorcerer’s grace.

  He strode across the tower room, moving with a subtle ease Morgan did not mistake for relaxation. A sense of alert awareness radiated off the tall figure.

  “No, don’t get up, not yet,” he said when Morgan would have sat. “Let me attend to you first.”

  Mychael’s examination was efficient, yet thorough, leaving little of Morgan unprodded.

  “You still had traces of chrystaalt in your mouth when you arrived, and this netting wrapped around you.” Mychael fingered the golden pryf silk. “You’re both in fair trim, your humors remarkably balanced.”

  “How long ago did we come out of the weir?” Morgan asked, sitting up and accepting the tunic, shirt, and chausses Mychael offered. Only the slightest trace of dizziness affected him. Overall, he felt stronger than when he’d left Claerwen. For certes he was better rested. Those last days in the future had been hard won.

  “Last night,” Mychael answered. “We brought you up from the caves before dawn, and you’ve slept the day.”

  Morgan swore and looked over his shoulder at Avallyn, resting so peacefully in the lavender-scented bed. They’d lost a whole day.

  “Can we wake her? Or do we have to wait
for her to come around on her own?” he asked, turning back to Mychael. “When we left the future, people were dying. Their only hope lies in what we can do here, in this time. We dare not delay—”

  “In your journey to Kryscaven Crater.” Mychael finished the sentence, withdrawing the weir kit from a pouch on his belt. “According to this, the Princess Avallyn is the key to your success.”

  “The map?” Morgan asked.

  “And more.” Mychael handed it over. “The runes of refuge are upon it, aye, and their purpose, and a plea for dragons.” He didn’t seem at all pleased about the last.

  “Your old enemy has near destroyed the world,” Morgan explained. “I’ve come back to vanquish Dharkkum and exile it from Earth. To that end, I need your help.”

  “I can’t be Ddrei Goch for you, Morgan, no matter what is at stake.” His expression turned grim.

  “I saw you do it. I saw the last battle in a scrying pool in the future.”

  “To make the transformation again would destroy us both,” Mychael said, “the red dragon and me. ’Twas exceedingly unpleasant the first time. A second time would be catastrophic and leave you one dragon short for your task, odds that would ensure your defeat.”

  “The first time was monstrous.” A woman’s voice broke into their conversation.

  Morgan looked up and was washed through with a sense of déjà vu. ’Twas Llynya, the elfin maid of so many of his dreams, but a sprite no more. She’d matured, dignity having taken the place of exuberance. A calmer beauty suffused a face once lit by a fiery spirit. She was not so thin, so implike, but had blossomed into the full loveliness of womanhood. Seeing her again, he was struck once more by her and Avallyn’s resemblance, but his heart knew the difference even more than his eyes. He’d been born for the desert maid.

  “A second time is impossible,” Llynya finished, walking farther into the room. Her clothes were elegant, a tunic and chausses as always, but of a material unlike any Morgan had seen before, All green and silver, it shimmered like rain sheeting down around her body. Her hair was full of leaves, the fresh green leaves of spring. They twined through her ebony braids in a verdant garland, with nary a twig in sight.