Hewspear held the lantern in the little doorway, illuminating the small room beyond. There were several rows of small desks caked in dust, and the walls were lined with shelves filled with crumbling scroll, yellowed parchment, and dusty tomes.
Vendurro whistled. “Plague. Me.” He looked at the captain. “This is it, ain’t it?”
It was something. Something hidden, anyway. But Matinios still couldn’t understand what they wanted with old records. Perhaps they incriminated the high priest or some baron or other, or some lay subsidy roll contained key information. But from hundreds of years ago? What difference could it make now?
Braylar said, “Glesswik, Vendurro, let’s see what we have here. Take the men and fill your satchels. Very. Carefully. The material is...delicate. We can ill afford clumsy hands shredding the evidence.”
Evidence of what?
Glesswik slapped Vendurro on the chest, then stepped through the doorway, a big smile on his pockmarked face.
That was when the world tilted sideways.
And then disappeared entirely.
Matinios saw only black, as if he had dunked his head in a barrel of tar, but then something came into focus. Something he had lived and could never forget, a memory, but sharper than any reality.
He was back on the ridge that changed his life three years ago. His patrol had been pursuing bandits, and they were ambushed. Their battalion got split in two—half the company in the wooded ravine trying to evade pursuit but heading for a bottleneck; the other up on the ridge. With his captain. Captain Craven, he’d call him later. After the discharge. But it was still Captain Bolshvin then.
Bolshvin looked at them, his long waxy face filled with panic. “We have to...we have to ride! To get back to camp!”
Matinios wasn’t sure he heard correctly. “But, Captain...the other men.”
The captain was shrill, out of control. “Back to camp, you whoresons! To...get reinforcements! Now!”
Those men in the ravine would die. Everyone around Matinios knew it. He saw it on all their faces. The captain was ordering them to abandon half the company. But no one said anything. They sat in their saddles, frozen, or twitching, uncertain, but silent, not wanting to ride, not wanting to disobey a direct order. Half of them looked ready to piss themselves.
Matinios looked around at the other auxiliary troops. “They wouldn’t leave us behind! You know they wouldn’t!” Then he turned to Bolshvin. “We can’t just ride off like cowards, Captain!”
Captain Bolshvin blasted breath out his nose like a maddened bull. “What did you say to me, soldier? What did you—”
“I’m not leaving them down there to get slaughtered by plaguing bandits!” Matinios looked to the others, knowing he was leaping off a ledge, but seeing no other choice. “Who’s with me?”
Captain Bolshvin grabbed his arm hard enough to bruise, spittle flying, eyes bulging. “You listen to me, you upjumped bastard! We are riding out of here! That is an order!”
Matinios didn’t think. He backhanded the captain, pulled the reins, spun his snorting horse around and guided him down the hill into the dark woods below. Leaving safety and numbers, flying into the dark and probably his death, Matinios rode down, not caring if anyone else followed. He refused to leave their men to die.
And then he heard hooves behind him. His brothers in arms riding after him, and up on the ridge, Captain Bolshvin screaming, “You disobedient dogs! You’ll hang for this! The lot of you will hang for this, every last—”
...traitor.
The voice was gone. Captain Bolshvin was gone.
Matinios was back in the dusty undercroft, and Captain Braylar stood there in front of him, Bloodsounder in hand, the door frame smashed to splinters.
The other Jackals were on their knees or totally prone. Some were doubled over holding their ears. One Jackal was flat on his back, staring vacantly at the corbelled ceiling. Another lay on the floor, struggling to raise his face out of a puddle of vomit. Mulldoos was shaking his head like a dog fresh out of a lake.
Most of the Jackals had glazed expressions, looking lost, overwhelmed. Matinios still felt woozy and disoriented, his limbs heavy.
Whatever it was...it affected all of them.
All except Captain Braylar, the only man still standing and alert.
Braylar looked around at the Jackals, at Lloi, at Matinios, his lips tight and thin like scar tissue. “On your feet. All of you. Let’s claim what we came for and be out of this place immediately.”
Mulldoos was leaning against the destroyed doorframe. “Plague me. What was that, Cap?”
Braylar replied, “A memory trap, unless I miss my guess. My sister spoke of such a thing, but...”
Hewspear said, “She is a Memoridon, capable of such craft. But even if the Priests of Truth employed rogue witches...how could they possibly have created this?”
Lloi said, “I couldn’t never construct nothing like that, Cap. And I can do plenty, even not being a slick Memoridon.”
Mulldoos’s eyes darted to Matinios, then he gave Lloi a murderous glare.
Braylar shook his head. “A mystery, to be sure, and one I refuse to speculate about overmuch now. But it all but confirms that we found what we’ve been searching for. These priests, rather surprisingly and alarmingly, yoked memory magic in some limited capacity long before the Syldoon mastered Memoridons.” He barked orders to the Jackals. “Gather all the documents from the shelves. With haste. But infinite care. The man who tears a single page will have his skin torn in turn, understood?”
The Jackals entered the room hesitantly, but when no other trap was triggered, they set to work.
Matinios’s head still swam in the echoes of the memory. He looked at Lloi, vision a little blurry. “She’s a rogue memory witch,” he blurted, before looking at Braylar’s flail. “And that thing protects you from memory magic, doesn’t it?” He rubbed his eyes, “But why would Cynead—” and stopped.
Too late. Much too late.
Mulldoos shook his big head. “Of all the plaguing dumb things you could have said, pen monkey, that was without question the plaguing dumbest.”
Braylar had the ghost of a sad smile on his face. “I had rather hoped to be wrong about you, Matinios. Truly, a pity.” Then he nodded.
Matinios was pulling his axe off his belt when he felt the dagger slash across his neck. He spun and buried the axe deep in Sepulveedo’s skull. The Jackal gaped, dropped the bloody blade, and fell sideways. Matinios reached for his throat before stumbling against the shattered door frame, legs buckling.
The world tilted crazily again, and he was lying on his side, looking at everyone’s boots and the shelves beyond, and much closer, a growing puddle of blood.
The pain was hot and fierce. Matinios tried to scream but found he couldn’t. Why couldn’t he scream?
He heard Mulldoos say, “Dumb bastard couldn’t do a simple thing like cutting a throat without cocking it up. You two, drag Sep over there until we’re done.” After a pause, the lieutenant added, bitterly, “Guess we’ll be needing a new scribbler now too, huh, Cap?”
Braylar’s voice. “So it would appear. But we will choose the next chronicler ourselves, yes?”
“Too bad,” Vendurro said from somewhere very far away. “Kind of liked Matinios. You know, if he hadn’t been a traitor and all.”
And then the world was plunged into black and Matinios was riding down the ridge on his horse again, the cold night wind on his face as he hurtled headlong into the dark.
The Darkness within the Light
- The Annwn Cycle -
Shawn Speakman
Tathal Ennis slid the dagger into the side of Old Wynn’s neck.
The Wily Puck’s grizzled bartender stiffened, his eyes going wide as he struggled for a few moments. Tathal savored the moment but not for the reasons others would assume. It was not the steel tearing flesh. Or the warm blood flowing down the knife to his fingers. Or the
ragged crunch of the blade sliding against worn vertebrae. No, the ancient wizard enjoyed the other’s sudden realization of that moment—and how short the moment would last. It was in Old Wynn’s eyes and in the stink of the death sweat that had broken out upon him. It was in the man’s hands as they frantically dug into Tathal’s arm. It was in the bartender’s inability to scream, his vocal cords severed. At his end, Old Wynn clung desperately to the wizard just as he clung to life. Tathal absorbed it all. Death had a way of revealing a man in ways no discussion ever could. And when it came to knowing men’s lives, no one knew them like Tathal Ennis.
He could have let Old Wynn die unaware of the death that now took him. But the bartender had been a sly old coot. Somehow, he had broken free of the trance spell and had sensed Tathal’s purpose in coming to Betws-y-Coed.
Since the spell would no longer work, Old Wynn could not live. Men of his profession served and befriended men who protected their community’s own.
Not that the wizard’s wraith companion couldn’t keep him safe.
Or Tathal, for that matter.
It was just the principle of it.
The wizard let the body of Old Wynn slide slickly to the alcohol-soaked floor behind the bar. It was as good a place as any for the town’s authorities to find him.
“That did not go well,” Tinkham growled from the gloomy rafters above. The dark Shadowell fairy shook his head.
Tathal ignored his companion. With a few spoken words, he burned away the blood upon his hand and forearm. Then he placed the bloody knife on the bar in front of Breena Roberts, the middle-aged woman with the dubious honor of being Old Wynn’s last patron. She was the only other person in the pub. “It happens,” he responded finally, sitting next to her on a stool. “Some people in these Misty Isles possess a bit of magic in their bloodlines from the time the fey cohabitated with them so long ago.” The wizard turned back to the short woman, worried his spell would stop working on her as it had on Old Wynn. “Can you still hear me, Miss Roberts?”
Her gray eyes spell-ridden, Breena Roberts nodded. “I can.”
Tathal peered closely at her. She was still under his spell. Besides, if she weren’t, she would have screamed bloody murder for what he had done to Old Wynn. “Before we were so rudely interrupted, we were speaking about the fairies of Betws-y-Coed,” he resumed, his voice thick with honey. “You were speaking about the fairy glen and the creatures you have seen there.”
“Yes, fairies. And others,” she said, a lazy smile crossing her thin lips.
“You mentioned your grandmother,” Tathal said. “How did she call the fairies? Tell me your memory of it.”
Breena closed her eyes, remembering a long-forgotten dream. “I am eight years old. I am burning with fever. No one knows why. My nana steals me away from my mum in the middle of the night. Mum always says nana is crazy. The stars are out. We are walking. It is cold but my skin burns. I cannot stop shivering. I am weak. But nana holds my hand. So tightly. So tightly.” She paused. “We are in the woods on a path now along a river. I can hear it roaring. I want to sleep but she stops me. Says it is dangerous. I do not like that. She carries me down the bank to the river’s edge. I see water falling through a cut in large rocks. I have been here before but never at night. She sings words. I know them. About the Fey Queen. The Lady. The moonlight enters the falling waterfalls and stays there.”
Breena paused. “And then little lights fill the air,” she whispered.
Tathal listened intently. The centuries had made him patient. Every small community featured a wealth of knowledge found in its oldest inhabitants. They held onto stories like dragons hoarded gold—knowing family histories, rivalries, and the strange. People like Old Wynn and Breena Roberts knew much. Upon arrival to Betws-y-Coed, Tathal had come straight to The Wily Puck, an ancient pub on the outskirts of the village. Bartenders who had spent any time in the profession had loose tongues. They also knew everyone. Old Wynn had led Tathal to Breena. The wizard hoped she would lead him to the information he sought.
“You see the Lightbrands, Breena, the fairies who guard the Lady of the Lake,” Tathal said, hoping to glean more information from her. “Is this so? Can you describe them?”
The woman smiled as if drunk. “Light. So pretty. Fast. Like shooting stars, they are.”
“Was it your grandmother’s singing that brought them?” Tathal asked, hopeful for the first time since entering Betws-y-Coed.
“Yes.”
“Can you remember which song? Or some of the words?”
“I have sung it only once in my life. But I know it as if it was inscribed upon my heart. The verse goes like this:
Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire!
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green;
The cowslips tall her pensioners be;
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those be rubies, fairy favours;
In those freckles live their savours;
I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
“Shakespeare,” Tathal grunted. “Why would that even be important here?”
“My nana says the fairies love Shakespeare. They knew him, she tells me.” Breena blinked lazily again, her eyes lost to the past. “Nana holds my hand while she sings it, next to the river in the fairy glen.”
“You are getting nowhere,” Tinkham growled.
The wizard glared at the fairy, who still hid in the rafters. When Tinkham shrugged and looked away, Tathal turned back to the woman. “What happens when she finishes the song?”
“The Lightbrands swirl around us. Faster and faster. The fairy glen changes. And the Lady is here. So fair…”
It seemed simple enough, Tathal thought.
“Return from memory, Breena Roberts.”
The old woman sat up a bit straighter, still under the influence of the wizard’s spell but her face having suddenly lost the look of wonder that only children in the presence of real magic possess.
“When your grandmother sang to call the Lightbrands, what happened, do you think?” Tathal asked. He may have found the key he needed but some locks had fail safes. Best he knew them now before it cost him.
“We were beckoned. Pulled. Away from this world. I could feel it,” she said slowly, testing each word as if verifying they were right. “The fairy glen shimmered and we entered a different fairy glen, somewhere else. Surrounded by trees and a larger waterfall.”
The wizard thought on that. Magic could transport people from this world into the world of the fey. There were several portals that led to Annwn—one of which he had a hand in creating—but there were powerful beings living in both worlds and the one Tathal sought could easily draw people from this one into another.
The Lady would never summon his like to the place Breena had traveled, of course. He would have to break in, uninvited.
Or use trickery.
“You said you used the song once yourself,” he continued.
“Once, long ago,” she said dreamily. “Got me a husband. The Lady helped. Then made me promise.”
“Promise what?”
“Never to return,” Breena said sadly. “Or share the secret of the song. I have never returned. Or spoken of it...” She trailed off seeming to realize she did that very thing now.
Tathal snorted. People wished for the most inconsequential things. Money. Power. Love. Such insipid things. Especially love. He wanted none of that. He wanted answers, had spent centuries finding them, and he would continue until he had them, no matter the repercussions.
“Where is your husband now?” Tathal asked, genuinely curious.
“He left me before I was thirty,” Breena
said. There was a hint of old sorrow in her voice, the kind created by a broken heart. “The Lady gave me what I wanted but did not say for how long I would have it. The curse of fairy kind, I suppose. My nana warned me about that, she did.”
Tathal hid his amusement from Tinkham. The fey could be cunning pranksters. And when it came to the most powerful fey, nothing of what they said made sense, at least not on the surface. Breena had gotten what she wanted—but also hadn’t.
The wizard would have to be on special guard to keep that from happening to him.
“Where is Wynnard?” Breena asked.
“He stepped out.”
Tinkham grunted. “All the way out.”
It took all of Tathal’s will not to fry the little squirt right then and there. He needed the fairy too much this night.
Breena hadn’t heard. “I would like another drink, please.”
“I will pour you one when we are finished,” Tathal assured. “Go back to the day that you summoned the Lady of the Lake on your own. How old were you? How did you meet her? What was she like? Did she test you in any way?”
“The Lady,” Breena sighed, lost to memory again. “I am eighteen. I sing and the fairies answer my call. They fly around and around me until they blur like a comet streaking the sky. I am not afraid; I remember the time when I was young. I can feel myself being pulled to a different place and I arrive there, before a larger waterfall.” The old woman breathed deeply. “And she is here. Waiting. For me. The Lady is radiant and beautiful like the dawn. She glows hovering before a waterfall, her bare feet gracefully touching the stream and her long hair flowing around her head like she is in water. She is made of starlight and moonlight and the ethereal light of the fairies. She is pure. And just. I feel her look into me. Into my heart. She is doing this and we are connected. I can feel her power, her empathy, her long service to the Word. I can see each knight she has aided and the quests they were on. She laments the love of those she has lost and the many more she will yet love and lose.
Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists Page 17
