by Karen Myers
“I don’t remember that part very well. Mag was there?”
“She helped,” Maelgwn said.
“You crawled into one of these ways in Madog’s garden and locked yourself in.”
“You closed both ends,” Maelgwn said.
George could hear the remnants of panic in his voice.
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Our friend here was rather desperate and it occurred to him to look for me,” Rhys said.
“And he found you. Are you hurt?”
“No, not really,” he said. His voice changed. “But you, I’m afraid…”
“Never mind,” George said, grimly. “I remember that part very well indeed.”
Rhys was silent a moment.
“We’ve cleaned you up. How is it?”
“Blind, lame, and battered. Quite a prize for Angharad, don’t you think?”
Rhys said, “She’ll be glad to get you back in any form, believe me.”
*Picture of George crumpled. Picture of George, not crumpled.*
Pleased to be alive, too, Mag, though I’m afraid I’m still pretty crumpled.
Maelgwn told Rhys, “He’s talking to Cloudie’s mom.”
*Picture of Angharad. Picture of Angharad drawing. Picture of paper.*
You have a message from Angharad?
*Yes. Picture of Angharad with Mag in the conservatory. Picture of Angharad reaching for me, my eyes bandaged. Picture of Angharad hugging me. Picture of Angharad and me, with a baby.*
His sudden gasp made Rhys ask Maelgwn, “What did she say?”
He put a hand over his face reflexively, though there was nothing to hide that the bandage didn’t already cover. He had no trouble translating the message. She’s at Edgewood, she wants me to come back, she knows about my eyes, she’s going to have a child.
Is this true, Mag?
*Picture of Angharad, picture of bud inside Angharad.*
“Sorry,” he said to Rhys, “Mag just surprised me.” His voice thickened. “You were right about Angharad.”
“Of course. Never any doubt of it,” Rhys said, trying to lighten the mood.
“Although,” he continued, “we still have to get out of here, with the youngsters.”
“More than that,” George said. “Madog has to go down. Die, I mean.”
“Impossible. We haven’t the means.”
“Doesn’t matter. There’s no other way to free Cloudie, and we can’t let him live. He used Cloudie to run the barrier ways around Edgewood and his own domain. He wants to use Mag to do the same to Annwn. All of it.”
Silence. “Is that possible?” Rhys asked.
“I don’t know, but Cernunnos thought so. I can’t let Madog live to try. He could claim Mag, just like a way—it’s how he controls Cloudie.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know yet, everything hurts too much to think.” A thought occurred to him. “Maelgwn, did Cloudie make a way to Rhys’s cell? Is it still there?”
“I closed it,” Maelgwn said.
“Oh, no. Madog will know you exist now.”
Maelgwn said, in a voice too bitter for his age, “He already knows, remember? From when I told him about Cloudie’s mom.” He was implacable in his determination not to forgive himself. “Besides, I couldn’t let him follow Cloudie here.”
“Not your fault. You had no way of knowing.”
“I knew enough not to make stupid threats.”
George left it alone. He’d have to come to his own terms with it. “Maybe I can kill it. He’ll think it was me,” George said. “I can’t see which one it is. Can you point me to one end?”
Maelgwn took his hand and stretched the index finger in the right direction. “It’s close,” he said.
George felt for a way owned by Maelgwn, in that direction. Suddenly it was obvious, he could see that it was more recent than the others. When did I learn how to do that, he wondered. He collapsed it.
“Maelgwn, if Madog comes up here looking for you, those ways you claimed are going to stand out. You should unclaim them, and I’ll do the same with this one.”
“But then they’ll be open and cold.”
“A little cold air will feel good.” He released the claim on the way they were in and the air temperature dropped.
Rhys leaned forward and felt his forehead. He was burning up.
“It’s an infection,” George said, unemotionally. “I can feel it.”
“Just a wound fever, from the knee. It’ll pass,” Rhys said.
“Maybe.” He asked for more water but refused food.
“I’m going to lie here for a while and see if I can’t come up with some kind of plan. I’ve had enough sleep,” George said.
Rhys recognized the grimness in his voice. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
Angharad looked up from her reverie when Mag tapped her drawing with the four panels.
“George is awake?”
One knock.
“You gave him my message?”
One knock.
“Did he understand it?”
One knock.
She wasn’t sure how to phrase the next question. She wanted to know his mind, whether he would try to come back.
“What does he want?” she asked.
Mag picked up the black hat that stood for Madog, and dropped it on the floor.
“He wants Madog dead.”
Mag picked up the toy black hat and George’s collar. This time, the collar threw Madog to the floor.
“Oh. He wants to kill Madog.”
“Is that possible?” Edern had come up beside her.
Three knocks.
George lay on his side in his personal darkness all night long. He must have slept for some of the time, and much of it was spent in fever dreams, but in the lucid intervals he chewed on the problem.
He refused to think about his lost eyes. Instead, he welcomed the darkness as an aid to concentration. Better to think about a plan for attack than to dwell on what he’d lost.
For every year of Angharad’s face, for the face of any child, for every painting she did that he wouldn’t see—for each of these he wanted to exact his pound of flesh. He was infuriated that Madog could only suffer a single death. He couldn’t think of his damage for his anger.
In one moment of clarity, he thought, I wonder if this is how Cernunnos feels, when affronted by injustice?
His fever put him through burning heat and bouts of teeth-snapping shivering, and it got worse as the night wore on.
He could hear Rhys and Maelgwn shift in their sleep and wake up, only to resume their even breathing a few minutes later. At least Rhys was free, and could look after Maelgwn. Something worthwhile came of this.
Mag sent him Angharad’s message again.
Don’t, Mag. It can’t happen. I wish it could.
He put his hand down and felt the heat from his knee even through the thick bandage. I suppose blindness isn’t really going to be the problem, after all, he thought. I would have liked to see the face of my child, though.
He forced his mind back to the problem at hand.
He never noticed the familiar voice humming a soft, soft tune as it sent him into sleep and kept him there.
George stirred uncomfortably while Rhys and Maelgwn packed away the remains of their breakfast.
“How are you feeling?” Rhys asked him.
“I’ve discovered that anger is very useful for blocking out unpleasant thoughts.”
“Indeed, I’ve discovered that for myself recently,” Rhys said.
He continued, “You know, it’s morning, and Madog hasn’t come here to search. It may be that he didn’t look at my cell himself, and so the way was undetected. I think we’ve got to close this one again, it’s just too cold otherwise.”
George reluctantly agreed and re-claimed and closed it, including the little entrance Cloudie had made into its side, which was s
omehow separate.
“I have some business to take care of,” he said. “First, I want to try something. Is there room behind me?”
“Yes, but for what?” Rhys said.
“Take the bandages off my eyes,” he said, without explaining himself.
Rhys unwrapped them for him.
George raised himself on his right elbow, hissing at the stress it put on his back, and invoked the horned man. As he’d hoped, he could see again with the borrowed eyes, after a fashion, with colors suppressed. The heavy antlered head was hard to hold up in this awkward position. He could feel the bandages around his chest shift as his body contours adjusted.
“Rhys, unwrap this.” He pointed at the bandage around his knee.
Rhys hesitated. “Maelgwn, can you sit behind him and help hold the antlers up, to make it easier for him?”
George understood that Rhys wanted Maelgwn far from whatever they would find under the bandage. “Light some candles,” he said.
Rhys unwrapped the bandage. The knee oozed and stuck to the cloth as Rhys worked it free. George could smell the rot inside with the horned man’s senses, but he wasn’t sure if Rhys could.
George reached his free left hand down to his knee. It was hot under the skin. As he pressed it, wincing at the pain, he felt a sort of crackling inside.
He couldn’t reach any further without stretching his back. “Feel below the joint. Warm or cold?”
Rhys lay his hand on George’s calf. He looked up at the horned man’s face. “Not warm.” George could hear him suppress the alarm in his voice for the sake of the boy.
“Alright, that’s what I thought. Let’s wrap it up again.”
Rhys said, slowly, “George, I don’t think I can cut… Not without even a fire to cauterize it.”
“I know. I think it’s too late anyway. Nothing to be done about it.” He tried to smile at Rhys using the alien face, to comfort him. “It just makes the deadline for our attack more urgent.”
Time for the next item on his list.
“Maelgwn, please sit with Rhys where I can see you.” The antlered head was heavy, but he wanted to be able to see their faces for this next bit.
“A few days ago I asked you if you would be my foster-son. Now I need to ask if you will go with Rhys instead.”
“No, I want to go with you. I meant to tell you so,” Maelgwn protested.
“Rhys comes from an important family. They have domains to rule. It would be better for you,” George said.
“I don’t care. You promised me, you said ‘for keeps.’”
Rhys said, “He’s right.”
George said carefully, “Maelgwn, you need to hear something hard. I’m not going to get out of here. This,” he pointed at his knee, “is gangrene, what Rhys calls ‘wound fever.’ The leg is dying. It’s going to kill me as the toxins get into my blood.” He paused. “It may not take very long.”
Maelgwn drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. He rocked, with his head down, his face invisible. Then he lifted it up and said, “I’d rather be your foster-son even for a few days, if that’s all there is.”
“So be it,” George said. “I want it, too. You’ll abide by my arrangements?”
Maelgwn nodded.
Rhys listened as George spoke, numb with the ill fate of seeing George rescued only to have him succumb to his injury. He knew George was right. The wound fit the symptoms he’d learned. He was ashamed at his relief that he wouldn’t have to try an amputation with George’s saber, but it would never have worked anyway, without a fire to seal the wound and keep him from losing too much blood.
George said, “Rhys, I don’t know the form. You’ll have to help me.”
“Doesn’t require much, just a statement before a witness, and I can serve for that.” He saw the grim lines of pain and determination on George’s face as he prepared his words.
George looked at Maelgwn. “I, George Talbot Traherne, great-grandson of Gwyn ap Nudd, adopt Maelgwn as my foster-son, to share equally with any other heir of my body. If I should die before I see her again, I request my wife Angharad to take him in as her foster-son as well. I appoint my friend and kinsman, Rhys Vachan ap Rhys ab Edern, as his protector, to watch over him as an elder brother.”
He looked at Rhys with a question in his alien eyes. For the first time, Rhys could see George behind the face of the horned man.
He nodded. “And so I will, and gladly.”
“Anything else?” George asked.
Rhys said, “That’ll do. We’ll write it down later.” Assuming there was going to be a “later,” he thought.
George drooped and released the horned man so that he could fully lie down again, returning to the dark.
Maelgwn crawled over and knelt on his heels beside him. “Is there anything you need, foster-father?”
George was warmed by the pride in the boy’s voice. “I need to rest and I need to work on an idea I have, with Mag. I’ll open Cloudie’s entrance so you can get in and out.
Rhys objected, and George said, “The cold air will feel good anyway.” He could feel the fever building again.
“Whatever I’m going to try,” he said to Rhys, “it has to be today, while I still can. Give me an hour or so.”
Mag, I have an idea. Can you find Gwyn for me?
CHAPTER 27
Seething Magma knocked to get Cydifor’s attention. He looked up from his conversation with Angharad.
“Something you want, my lady?” he asked.
She plucked the toy lion from a table and tossed it at him. He caught it. “You want me to find Gwyn and bring him?”
One knock.
He nodded and put the lion down, leaving Angharad alone with Mag.
“What is it, Mag, is it George?”
One knock.
She pointed at the collar, the drawing for speaking, and Angharad’s magnifying glass.
“He wants to talk to me?”
One knock.
Mag repeated the tableau of George’s collar throwing down Madog’s black hat. She pointed at the sign for “one.”
“He wants to kill Madog. That’s number one.”
One knock.
Then she picked up the collar, Rhys’s crown, and the toy wolf, and moved them all to Edgewood on the map. She pointed at the sign for “two.”
“They’re coming to Edgewood. That’s number two.”
Mag returned the three objects west of the mountains. This time she only picked up the crown and the wolf and moved them to Edgewood. She pointed at “two” again.
“I don’t understand.”
Cydifor was back. “Gwyn’s coming,” he told Mag. To Angharad he said, “I think that was either all three come to Edgewood or only two of them.”
One knock.
“So, Madog dies. Rhys and the wolf cub come to Edgewood. Maybe George.”
One knock.
“What’s the deciding factor?”
Cydifor said, as Gwyn walked in, accompanied by Edern and Rhodri, “George comes, if he can. Is that it, Mag?”
One knock.
“Is George worse, Mag?” Angharad asked, her voice steady.
One knock.
Mag picked up the drawing of George’s injuries and added a bigger blot to the knee, then blotted the leg below and above.
“His leg is worse, it’s infected,” Angharad said, raising a hand to her face.
One knock.
Gwyn said, “Wound fever.” The look on his face shook her. She knew it was a painful death.
“Is Rhys well?” Edern asked.
One knock.
“You wanted me, my lady?” Gwyn said.
Mag lifted the collar.
“George wanted me?”
One knock.
She picked up the map of Madog’s domain west of the mountains. She delicately covered it with little lines and stopped. She pointed at the barrier way, and pointed at her new lines.
“These are all ways within Madog’s doma
in?” Gwyn said.
One knock.
“How many are there?”
She tapped the sign for one hundred, then tapped it again and again and again.
“There are hundreds of them.”
One knock.
She drew a building with a wall around it south of Edgewood and put Gwyn’s lion on it. She drew one thin line from Madog’s domain to just outside the wall.
“That’s Greenway Court and the hidden way Madog used,” Gwyn said.
One knock.
She carefully scratched over the way, crossing it out. She pointed at George’s collar.
“George collapsed that way.”
One knock.
Mag pointed at the collar and the symbol for speaking.
“George says…”
She pointed at the sign for “one,” then the collar, and started scratching out the barrier way and the other ways she’d drawn.
“First he will kill all the ways,” Cydifor breathed.
She pointed at the sign for “two,” then picked up her own cup and brought it to George’s collar. She added Madog’s black hat and Granite Cloud’s cloth.
“Then Mag will come to George,” Cydifor said, “and Madog and Cloudie will be there.”
She pointed at the “three,” then picked up George’s collar, the crown and the wolf and moved them to Edgewood.
“Then they will come here.”
She pointed at the sign for “four,” then picked up her cup and the black hat, and threw the hat to the floor.
“Then Mag will kill Madog,” Cydifor said. The room was silent, following along.
She pointed at the sign for “five,” then picked up Granite Cloud’s cloth and her own cup and brought them to Edgewood.
“Then Mag will come back with her daughter.”
“This is his plan?” Gwyn said.
One knock.
“When?”
Mag made a pseudopod with its end curved in a circle. She moved it from near ground level on the east over her body to almost ground level on the west.
Cydifor said, “That’s the sun, I think. Today, Mag? At dusk?”
One knock.
“It has to be today,” Gwyn said. “He doesn’t have much time, not with wound fever. Did he have a question for me?”
