“I apologize, my lords, for the refuse on the floor,” he said. “As you can see, the entire fort was taken unawares by powers over which not even I have control.”
While Rhys and Morgan gaped at the demons, Taliesin sidled up to Cade, half-turning his body so the men from Powys could neither hear him nor read his lips. “Congratulations. That was just about perfect. You disarm their anger with your apology, while at the same time implying that your strengths are superior to anyone who is not a god. Excellent.”
Rhys pointed his finger at Cade. “You promised us we would be safe here.”
“I appreciate that you accord me the ability to control demons,” Cade said, “but I’m afraid in this you give me too much credit. I have killed every demon I have come across, but these were sent by Mabon, son of Arawn, who does as he pleases, even in my castle. In truth, we should all be frightened of that power. It is more than an inconvenience.”
Morgan’s eyes narrowed. If Cade had breath, he would have held it, knowing that his words, although spoken mildly, might have pushed Morgan too far. The last thing Morgan wanted to do was acknowledge Cade’s authority.
“If the demons have harmed anyone from Powys, I will hold you personally responsible,” Morgan said. “None of the rest of the kings of Wales treat with them, yet the songs that bard of yours creates say you meet them at every turn. I find it disconcerting that demons would make themselves known to the King of Gwynedd.”
“Sometimes a man finds battle thrust upon him,” Cade said. “In those instances, there is little he can do but stand and fight.”
“My lords.” Rhiann glided forward, brushing off this catastrophic ending to her wedding as if it meant nothing to her. “I’m sure you are concerned about your ladies. Perhaps it’s best if we see to their safety and comfort.”
Rhys appeared to want to continue posturing and sputtered his protest, but his father nodded at Rhiann, the movement curt but approving. With Rhiann at their side, they made their way back to where their wives huddled, only just beginning to recover from Mabon’s spell.
“First Arawn at Caer Dathyl, then Camulos on the battlefield, and now demons at Deganwy.” Rhun helped Bronwen to her feet and moved nearer to the other companions. “Striking you at the times you feel strongest shows an audacity and cunning with which I hadn’t credited him.”
Cade looked at Taliesin who was leaning on his staff, studying Rhun. “Do you think this is really all Mabon’s idea? Could he not only be working with other gods, but for one more powerful than he is?”
Taliesin didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge that Cade had asked a question. Hywel, meanwhile, had recovered a bit more. He walked to where the two demons lay and crouched beside the first. He fingered one of the arrows, surely noting that it was his, and then straightened before poking the body with his toe.
Cade tucked a foot under the hip of the demon Rhiann had killed and flipped him onto his back. He recoiled at the creature’s grotesque features.
“Black thy horse and thy cape and thy heart, Mabon, the messenger of death.” Taliesin spoke in a deep voice that almost didn’t sound like his own.
Cade hadn’t heard him speak those words before and glanced at the bard.
Taliesin gave an uncharacteristic shrug. “It has come to me that we sail in uncharted waters—more and more so every day. The brotherhood of seers, of which I am the last, did not foresee what has come to pass, either at Caer Dathyl or here. We are outside the old prophecies now.”
Cade looked at Taliesin, who, perhaps was already regretting his frankness and had turned his face from him to gaze at the demons’ bodies. “I know you fear it, Taliesin, but to my mind, that is a good thing. It is time we left their world and made our own.”
* * * * *
Rhiann’s breathing quieted, becoming slower and more even. It was the moment for which Cade had been waiting—but now that it came to it, he didn’t want to leave her and a part of him didn’t see why he should. This was their first night together after all. He’d held her, and loved her, and been loved in return. Since Arianrhod had changed him, he’d assumed that such a love wouldn’t be possible for him. Arianrhod might have given him gifts of sidhe: immortality, strength, a fire within him beyond all imagining. But Rhiann had given him the gift of herself. Nothing could be more powerful than that.
Rhiann had fallen asleep in his arms, curled onto her side and facing away from him, her hands tucked under her chin. Cade brushed his lips over her hair and ran his hand along her hip, but she didn’t waken. He would have stayed if she had, but he forced himself to ease away from her, sit up, and swing his legs over the side of the bed. Rhiann had told him that even on her wedding night, she would rather wake with him gone than find herself lying beside his still body. It would be like waking beside a dead man.
Even though he was that dead man, he could appreciate how awkward that might feel. The panic in her face when she’d shaken him in the clearing before the battle with the demons had stayed with him. Besides, sleeping left him far more vulnerable than he wanted. It was difficult for him to believe, even though he used to be human, that men could sleep and lose themselves to dreams every night.
He hadn’t remembered worrying about it particularly as a youth. What if disaster struck while everyone was asleep? While it gave greater urgency to the importance of setting a watch, it was he, among all the residents of the fort, who had the best chance to hold off what came against them now.
Cade sketched a path through the sleeping fort, more shadow than man when he chose to be, and exited through a side door to the keep. Rhun stepped out of the entrance to the stables. The afternoon’s rain had stopped and the moon had come out. It shown brightly, illuminating Rhun’s face.
“I didn’t know if the lure of sleep would draw you in again,” Rhun said.
“Not tonight.” Cade walked to where Rhun waited.
“Are you ready?”
“Always.” Cade turned and led the way to the postern gate.
Rhun greeted the sentry. “Evening, Aeron.”
“My lords.” Aeron leaped to his feet. Fortunately for him, he didn’t have a doxy on his lap and had no need to fear Cade’s wrath. One might think that the postern gate watch would be the most despised of all watches at Deganwy, seeing how the guard stood alone, isolated from his companions, other than perhaps a sleepy stable boy. Cade knew from boyhood, however, that it was coveted for just that reason. It was the perfect spot for a man to tryst, should he be of that mind.
“We’ll knock as usual when we want back in,” Cade said as he slipped through the gate. Rhun followed close behind. Cade felt his friend breathe deeply and relish the night air outside the fort. It shouldn’t have been any different than the air inside, but Cade and Rhun had looked forward to their evening sojourns throughout the years.
Rhun’s marriage to Bronwen, coupled with Cade’s conversion to sidhe, had put a stop to them for a while. After the debacle at Bryn y Castell last winter, when Cade had gone out on his own and encountered a band of hostile men and demons, Cade had promised not to travel alone anymore unless he couldn’t help it. He didn’t need Rhun to remind him what kind of trouble he’d gotten into.
Rhun was thinking along similar lines. “Do you remember the first time we left Bryn y Castell like this?”
Cade’s lips twitched. “We were what? Seven? We imagined ourselves bold knights, sneaking past the guard while he was distracted by a maid. We didn’t realize it wasn’t yet ten in the evening, for all that the fort was quiet.”
“We lasted all of a dozen breaths before we were scrambling to get back inside.” Rhun grinned. “The guard swore he’d never tell, but that we weren’t to go out on our own again. He ran to Father instantly, of course.”
The two men laughed together, recalling the subsequent summons to Cynyr’s study and his stern visage. He’d not reprimanded them as they’d feared he would, however. Instead, he’d confessed that he was short two guards. He’d asked that the
y take their turn at watch duty along with the other men-at-arms, in order to prevent those who didn’t have permission to leave the fort, like Rhun and Cade had done, from finding themselves in trouble. The boys had been excited to do real work, staying up far past their previous bedtimes, and relieved to have escaped punishment—or even detection. Or so they thought.
“How long was it before we realized that it was all a scheme to keep us within the gates?” Rhun said. “Three years?”
“At least.” Cade smiled at the memory. “We were much loved.”
Then he shifted, scenting the air. After the hubbub in the hall had subsided, Cade had sent men to find out how the demons had gotten into the fort. As it turned out, they’d taken out the guard who’d been watching the postern gate, although they hadn’t killed him. For that, Cade had to be thankful, and it made him wonder even more what Mabon was up to. The guard, naturally, didn’t remember a thing.
Cade crouched low to the ground. Despite their varied and unusual qualities, demons couldn’t fly. Just like humans, they would have left traces of their passage at the base of the wall, along with a smell that hadn’t dispersed so much that Cade couldn’t detect it. Cade led Rhun away from the fort, following the clear footprints the demons had left.
“Could they have come through the village?” Rhun said.
Cade glanced back at his friend. Rhun strolled unconcernedly behind Cade, acting as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Of course, he possessed neither sight nor smell to aid Cade in his work. He was there as bodyguard and to rein Cade in if he became reckless. Cade had overheard Rhiann’s admonition to Rhun and his subsequent promise to protect him. Cade resolved not to do anything foolish, at least not tonight.
“I hope not. I think we would have heard.” Cade returned his eyes to the ground. “Many of the villagers were invited to our wedding feast. None of them knew in advance of our strange visitors, nor were missing family members, despite what the demons threatened.”
“Perhaps Mabon is both powerful and powerless,” Rhun said. “Perhaps he can only work through demons or humans to harm us—as with the murder of Cadfael by Teregad.”
“That’s an interesting thought,” Cade said. “Even Camulos, though he did knock me from my horse, didn’t rip out my throat.”
“Perhaps the gods only have the power we give them,” Rhun said.
That was a more philosophical statement than Cade had ever heard from Rhun. Still, Mabon had done damage, if only by releasing the demons that preyed on human flesh. It did seem, however, that his great strength lay in influencing others to do his dirty work for him. Something to think on.
They left the defenses of the fort and entered the rugged terrain that restricted any secretive approach to Deganwy. Many stunted trees and bushes had found a home on the slopes of the mountain. After following the precipitous slope for a hundred feet, they reached the bottom and slipped together under the trees that formed a ring around the fort.
Once inside the woods, Cade pulled up short. Silence descended on them, and it was one that Cade recognized as unnatural. The small sounds of the forest were never quiet unless they were frightened into it. A slight breeze lifted the leaves on the trees and the lock of hair across Cade’s forehead. Cade turned into it, still trying to catch the scent of the demons, but it had dissipated. Something else had disturbed the creatures here.
Cade glanced back at Rhun who gazed west towards the fort, listening. “Do you wish for a torch?” It was dark under the trees, but they weren’t so close together that some light from the moon and stars didn’t penetrate.
“No.” Rhun shook himself out of his reverie. “I can see my feet.”
Cade led Rhun eastward, deeper into the forest, always following the footprints.
Then Rhun pulled up short. “See here.” He gestured to the ground, to footprints that intersected the ones they’d been following. “These also belong to our two demons.”
Cade crouched to inspect them. “You’re right. It looks like they circled the fort before entering it.”
“We should foll—”
A sudden shaking interrupted Rhun’s words. The two men froze, uncertain what they were feeling, but when a branch above their heads cracked and fell, missing Rhun by inches, Cade pushed at his friend.
“Back!”
They fled towards Deganwy, dodging dead trees and branches that seemed to leap out at them as they passed.
“This could shake the fort right off its mountain!” Rhun jumped over a tree that had fallen in the path.
Cade had Caledfwlch in his hand and hacked at a tangle of bracken than blocked his way. Every time he put a foot down, it felt as if his knees would buckle and bring him to the ground. Part of him wanted to stop and just hang onto the nearest tree, but he was compelled to keep running. He felt he was safe only in the brief moments he was airborne.
Gradually, as they got closer to the fort, the shaking slowed and then subsided. Cade’s heart, if he’d had one, would have been pounding right out of his chest. They’d returned home ten times faster than they’d gone out. From the edge of the woods, he gazed up at the fort, relieved to see that it still stood and looked the same as it had an hour earlier.
“It has been some time since I felt such fear as that.” Rhun stumbled to a halt, one hand on the smooth surface of a tree trunk and the other at his ribs.
Cade snorted under his breath. “I shouted like a wounded cow. I let every animal, human, or demon within a mile of Deganwy know we were here.”
“It was the unexpected nature of it,” Rhun said. “I’ve heard of rumblings in the earth but never felt one. Is this Mabon’s doing too?”
“Let’s pray it isn’t. For Mabon to have the power to control the surface of the earth would make him even more daunting—and erratic—than we’d already thought him.”
“Your conclusion pleases me as well.”
The voice echoed on all sides. The two men twisted around nearly full circle looking for its source, before they saw the shimmering of light and smoke. As they watched, the light took the shape of a woman, coalescing out of mist into solid flesh. She stood in the cleared space between the base of the mountain and the trees, as unexpected and unlooked for as she’d been after the events at Caer Dathyl.
“Madam.” Cade bowed low. Hastily, Rhun copied him.
“Noble servants,” Arianrhod said, “I am looking for my son. I heard his name fall from your lips this night. Have you heard from him?”
Cade blinked, uncertain how to respond to Arianrhod’s request and undone by the fact that here was something Arianrhod didn’t know or couldn’t control. “Mabon is not here.” He straightened and forced himself to look into Arianrhod’s face. “We do have word of him, however. This evening, two demons entered Deganwy at your son’s behest. Or so they said.”
Arianrhod fixed her eyes on Cade’s. The force of her will burrowed into his mind, and he couldn’t look away or move. He couldn’t have breathed even if he were capable of it. He hoped that Rhun, who was also frozen, wasn’t finding it equally impossible.
“Did these demons, as you call them, say what they wanted?” Arianrhod said.
“They claimed Mabon sent them to collect Dyrnwyn, the Sword of the White Hilt, from me. Mabon believes that I have it,” Cade said.
“Does he?” Arianrhod sounded very much like Taliesin. Cade couldn’t read her any more than he could his friend.
“Yes, Madam. I know no more than that,” Cade said.
“But my son did not come himself.”
“No.” Cade warred with himself as to whether he should mention the incident with the boar after the battle against the demons, but while he was deliberating, Arianrhod spoke again.
“Very well.” She snapped out of existence with hardly a blink or heartbeat between the instant she was there and then not. In her place stood a doe. Her soft eyes gazed at the two men with guileless innocence. The three creatures stared at each other, and then with a twitch of her tail, the de
er bounded into the woods.
At her departure, Rhun collapsed onto his hands and knees in the grass, gasping for breath. “Is that what it’s like every time?”
“Yes, and no,” Cade said. “Every time is exactly the same and yet unique.”
“Where do you think the doe’s gone?” Rhun said. “A foolish man might harm it.”
“I will send word to the people of the village not to touch her. None of them want to be indebted to Arianrhod,” Cade said.
Rhun nodded. “Better to starve than that.”
Cade knelt next to him, one arm across his shoulders. “She didn’t hurt you, did she?” The sudden fear of it burned in his chest. “Tell me you don’t feel any different than an hour ago!”
“Her very essence bored into me,” Rhun said. “From the moment she stood in front of us, I couldn’t move; couldn’t think. As far as I could tell, even my heart ceased to beat. She sucked all life and breath from me.”
Cade could appreciate how Rhun felt. Cade’s first encounter with Arianrhod had left him a sidhe. He couldn’t blame Rhun for being overwhelmed by her presence, even if she’d ignored him and focused, as usual, on Cade. Cade helped Rhun to his feet and turned him so he could study his face. Rhun’s eyes were bloodshot, but still his own.
“I am well,” Rhun said. “She came to see you, as she always does, although as always she leaves us with more questions than answers.”
“She’s searching for Mabon,” Cade said. “Why can’t she find him?”
“Maybe because he doesn’t want to be found,” Rhun said. “Not a pleasant thought.”
Cade returned his gaze to the spot where Arianrhod had stood. “The gods meddle in the lives of men. I fear that when they do that, the result is never what we’d hope.”
“Come,” Rhun said, more in control of himself. “You and I should return to the fort. I know you hoped we could linger at Deganwy, but Arianrhod’s visit puts a new urgency to the coming fight with the Saxons. We can’t face Mabon and the Saxons at the same time, and the Saxons are pressing. I will go with Siawn to muster his men and mine. Where shall we meet you?”
The Pendragon's Quest (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 4) Page 8
