by Terry Madden
Dish checked his watch. “Should be here any time now.”
“Close that door,” Bronwyn called from inside. “I don’t want Merryn to be chilled when we get her settled.”
**
Merryn arrived by medical transport. The ramp over the front steps made it easy to wheel the gurney into the cottage. With two medics attending, she was settled into the bed by the window that overlooked the south pasture and the greenwood that had been attempting to reclaim it for a millennium.
“I shall miss it,” she said, a tear welling in her tired eyes. The lullaby whir of the oxygen machine pointed to the silence.
Dish took her hand. “You know as well as I where you’re going. The beauty there will make you weep. The magic there is in the flutter of every leaf.”
She squeezed his hand with all the strength left her. With urgency, she said, “You mustn’t blame him.”
“Who?”
“The lad. He’s been a great friend to me, Hugh. We’ve learned many things together.”
“He’s kept you chasing a well that can never be found. He knows as well as I—”
“He knows. As do I. The well will open. But not yet, I hope.” She put a withered hand on his cheek. “You were meant to die in that crash, Hugh. You were meant to carry on in that other world, rule your kingdom. Aye, it was Connor who brought you back. You mustn’t blame him, he does enough of that himself.”
“I understand that. I do.”
“There are others waiting,” she muttered. The morphine had taken effect. “The Sunless, aye. Oh, aye. When it opens, you must…”
“Must what?”
But she had drifted off to sleep, looking out the window, her eyelids still half open as if she couldn’t stop looking at the land she loved. Only the rattle of her shallow breathing indicated she still lived.
Dish turned his wheelchair, to see Connor disappear through the door to the kitchen.
Merryn slept well into the afternoon, and Dish watched over her. What was she talking about? The Sunless? They’d been nothing more than fairy tales to Nechtan, told to him as a child to frighten him into being good. Dish knew of no reference to the Sunless in the legends of the Celts in this world. How could Merryn even know of them?
Mr. Peavey knocked at the door before leaving for the night. It was Peavey who’d kept her farm running as Merryn fell to the advances of age. He’d been her employee since Dish was a boy, and now he appeared at a loss for words, standing at the foot of Merryn’s bed, his cap twisted in his thorny hands.
“I’ll set to the shearing on the morrow, miss,” he said to her, but there were tears in his eyes. “A fine harvest of fleece this year. Perhaps I’ll have one spun for ye, for a cloak like, or a blankie. ‘Twould be soft and warm and smell of your flocks.”
“’Twould be grand,” she managed to say. “You’ve been so kind to me, Jory. What would I ever in the world do without you?”
“I wouldn’t change nothin’ about these years, miss.”
Mr. Peavey replaced his cap on his balding head and turned to go. He wiped at his large nose with a stained kerchief, then leaned down to whisper to Dish.
“Not sure if she should know ‘bout the people who’ve come ‘round of late.”
“What people?”
Peavey limped toward the front door, motioning for Dish to follow. When they were outside, he said, “They come in the evenings every now and again, park in the lay-by down on the road and walk through the forestry grove to the brook. She hates the forestry grove, all Scotch pine, all spaced right for the woodsmen to come and mow them down for lumber.”
“Who are these people? Have you spoken with them?”
“Oh aye. I says ‘tis private land, have they come for something. Pilgrimage, says they. Holy well seekers, looking for a Ladywell. I says there’s no well here, just a brook. ‘Haps you seek Madron well off in Madron village but o’er the hill.”
“And what did they do then?”
“Thanked me nice and kind and went off.”
“Then why is this still a problem?”
“They come again, but last night late. Whilst I was checking on a few sick lambs.”
“The same people?”
“No different. Coming the same way, though.”
“And they only just arrived after Merryn went to hospital?”
“It would seem so, unless I never seen them before which is hard to reckon.”
“Thank you for alerting me. I think Merryn need not know.”
With a tip of his cap, Peavey said, “Now I must see to the lambs. We’ve a few with the squirts.”
“What was that about?” Connor startled Dish. He had a kitchen towel in his hand and was drying a bowl.
“Just a bit of sentimental chat.” Dish started back into the cottage. “I think Bronwyn left us stew. Let’s see that Merryn eats a bit.”
From the door, Dish turned back to watch Peavey’s hobbling gait as he headed toward the sheepfold. His gaze was drawn beyond the pasture to the wood that hid the brook. Dish used to play among the ancient trees, nap among them, watch the sky dance through the high branches of oak and hazel, beech and poplar. He once believed they could hear him, could see into his heart. It had been twenty years since he had shared the company of those trees. He had a distant memory of Merryn tending to some young saplings she feared the moles might get to. No one had ever come for a trek through that wood. If there was a well hidden in the undergrowth, Merryn would certainly have known of it. If he had some legs, he would do some investigating.
He became intensely aware that Connor still stood beside him.
Dish said, “Let’s eat, eh?”
**
Merryn ate no more than three small bites of the lamb stew. Her breathing grew shallower as she fell asleep.
Dish stacked plates on the sink board then turned toward Connor. “What do you know about the people Peavey has seen come up the brook?”
Connor washed the plates and arranged them in the drainer. “There’s a whole subculture of New Age well seekers these days. They may be following an old map that may show a spring in this area. But who are the Sunless?” Connor asked.
So Merryn had mentioned them to him as well then.
“Rogue druids, as far as I know. They follow some kind of dark blood magic, according to Lyl. They’ve been around for centuries as far as I know, but not here, at least, I don’t think so.”
Connor froze with a plate poised under the running water. “Oh,” he said. And that was it.
“How did you hear of them?”
“I overheard Merryn mention them to you. I thought maybe they had something to do with those people Peavey saw, but I guess not.” He stacked the dish in the rack, saying, “Maybe we’re not the only ones who remember the other side.”
“I don’t follow.”
“We’ve all been there,” Connor explained, his eyes on the twilight green beyond the kitchen window. “Deep inside, everyone suppresses memories of the Other World. Maybe these people are acting on a subconscious level, like sleepwalkers. Maybe they know.”
“Know what?”
“That the well will open soon.”
“Just because the child is born doesn’t mean it will be soon.”
“But what if the people coming to the brook, I don’t know, feel it inside. Feel something we don’t.”
It all came together with the force of a blow. Dish said, “What if they’re Old Blood?”
“Exactly.” Connor dried his hands and pulled Merryn’s car keys from his pocket. “She says she wants ice cream. Strawberry. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Dish sat beside Merryn and watched Connor drive away through the drawing room window.
Connor had tuned his soul to Merryn’s, understood the secrets she shared in a way Dish never could. And Dish had been so successful at shutting down his emotions, closing the door to his other life, that he was incapable of hope any longer. Once he had devoted his life to finding the well, and f
inding a way to open it so that he might cross the void to that place he had only imagined. Now that he had been there, the hope had been wrung out of his heart. He could only feel joy that Connor felt it now. Joy and envy. Dish reached out and held Merryn’s hand. Her eyes opened, but she stared through him, to a scene beyond.
“Tell me, auntie,” he whispered. “Will the Old Blood know when their time has come?”
She made no answer, but simply stared.
Connor returned with the ice cream, but Merryn had fallen into a deep sleep. He put it in the freezer and took his leave, headed for the hostel for the night.
Dish slept restlessly, listening to the rhythmic whir of the oxygen pump that assisted Merryn’s breathing. He wanted to be with her when death came. He got up three times to check on her, and each time, she had not moved from her deep sleep. At last, he fell asleep himself.
It was just before dawn when he heard low whispers coming from the drawing room. From his bed in the guest room, the hum of the oxygen pump drowned out the words, but from the tone of voice, it was no intruder.
Dish pulled himself to the edge of the bed and slipped into his wheelchair as soundlessly as possible. As he edged toward the door, he peered into the drawing room, lit, not by lamp, but by a single candle.
Connor sat beside Merryn, holding her hands in his, and even in the frail light of that candle, Dish could see the tears in his eyes.
“Is it time?” Dish asked.
“Yes,” Connor said feebly. “I’m sorry, Dish. I just…”
Before Dish could cross the room, Connor reached for the side table for what looked like a stone blade, like the one Ava had carried. He chanted words that were not Welsh, Cornish, or even Ildana, and before Dish could do anything to stop him, Connor opened Merryn’s wrist with the blade.
Chapter 4
Talan tried to sit up and felt the bindings of the little man fall away. Was he gone? Or just asleep? Talan was in a chamber bright with a hundred rushlights, all burnt low in the clips that held them. His own bedchamber. He had no memory of lying down, but he would call a servant to light new rushlights, for dawn must be a few hours away. Perhaps there was no dawn in this place. Maybe he was dead. He stifled a laugh.
How long had it been since the little man had slept and let Talan open his own eyes?
A woman, his wife, was curled in the corner of the enormous bed, asleep. It was as if he saw this chamber for the first time. Ceiling beams carved with heads of fish, deer, raven, horse all laughed at him in the flickering light. Tapestries illustrating the battle skills of Black Brac covered the stone walls. Nechtan’s bedchamber. Talan’s bedchamber. He was back in Caer Ys. He remembered now. He had brought his little cousin with him from the Isle of Glass. She would be his solás, she would be as none had ever been before, and the two of them would rule together.
But for his wife’s even breathing, it was silent in this chamber. The little man’s incessant blabbering had stopped. Perhaps Angharad had already driven him away.
He forced himself to stand, feeling the glow of a hundred flames glance off his bare skin without warming it. He opened the shutters of the window quietly so as not to wake his wife. A night breeze, cool and heavy with fog and the smell of fish, rolled through the window from the bay.
Leaning over the sill, he looked down the wall of the castle, far down to the cliffs that bore up the masonry erected by long-dead slaves, to the gentle slapping of the sea at the rocks below.
If he fell, how could the little man put him back together again? But he would, Talan was certain of it. He’d done it before. His fingers moved absently to the scar at his throat. There had to be another way to free himself of this fiend that had lodged inside his flesh.
The harp of the drowned maid sat on a great oak chest. It called to him. Perhaps it could tell him how. He picked it up, such a fragile thing. Lyleth had strung it with Nechtan’s hair, had worked a spell to resurrect him. The thought occurred to him that it might have been Lyleth who’d cursed him with the little man, for she was the only druí known to have conjured such things.
Talan had restrung the harp with silver strings, and now he set the thing on the window ledge, sat on a stool, lay his head beside it, and listened carefully to the song the sea air made as it passed through the strings.
It was supposed to speak. It was supposed to give him advice, name those who would do him harm. But the tune the wind played was like distant birdsong, crystalline and pure, melting snow in a babbling brook. It did not name Lyleth as the conjurer of this little man. It drew a picture in his mind of the child Angharad. She lay her pudgy little hands on his cheeks and called the little man forth.
The rushlights went out one after another as the sea breeze snuffed them.
“You serve one far greater than us.” Talan heard his own voice speak the words. But it was the little man. He’d awakened from his slumber. “We will free our lord, and he will restore the land to those who have waited.”
“What is it, my lord?” His wife asked. Yseult, that was her name. He left the window and sat down on the bed beside her, stroking her dark hair.
“Go,” he said. “Call the servants to relight the rushes.”
She moaned, turned her kittenish face to him, saying, “Dreams again?” Her hand was on his cheek, her thumb on his lips. Did she want to touch the little man? He opened his mouth wide, but she drew her hand away.
“Go,” he told her.
With a worried look, she did as bidden. The music of the harp filled his ears as Talan rose and found the hand mirror. Opening his mouth as wide as possible, he watched the fiend stride out to balance on the tip of his tongue. A naked little worm of a man, complete with a rigid cock like the stalk of a snail’s eye. His fists were planted on his narrow hips, his hairless skin a translucent sheath through which the pebble of his heart fluttered bright and red. His eyes were embers the size of sand grains peering from beneath the furrowed shelf of his brow.
“To the Red Bog, slave,” he repeated. “Your lord calls. He hungers, and none but he can set ye free. Like a mother bird, ye are, like a winged wasp, like a scorpion with stinger at the ready. To the bog, to the bog, to the bog! None but ye can set him free.”
Talan let his hand creep up his chest, ever so slowly. He made a snatch at the man. But his hand came away empty, for the creature had retreated into his gullet, raising his gorge.
“Cowardly bastard!” Talan cried and thrust his finger down his throat, forcing his supper out onto the floor.
Chunks of meat, peas, bile, but no little man. Where was he hiding? What part of Talan’s innards sheltered this vile creature?
“Come out, you beast!” He tried again, heaving up nothing but a stream of spittle.
Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he looked up to see Angharad standing there in her nightdress amid the flickering rushlights. She looked like a goddess-child with wings of light growing from her tiny back, the flames of her hair a wild aura. Filled with starlight, that’s what she was. Child of the dead. Child of two worlds.
“You suffer, cousin,” she said with her tiny child voice.
“That I do.” He felt hope sting him. Perhaps she knew how to rid him of this little man. He half-crawled to her, and still on his knees, opened his mouth and thrust out his tongue.
But Angharad was looking into his eyes, not his mouth.
“I heard your cries from my room. You’ve not slept,” she decreed.
“But can’t you see him? Look here. Look again.” He stuck out his tongue as far as he could, but he felt the little man lodge in his throat like a dry crust.
“Maybe it’s a leech-soul,” the child stated. “Someone you know who’s died, someone who was tethered. He won’t let you go until you’ve done his bidding.”
“Yes, yes. I’ve known many who’ve died. I’ve killed many myself. One who was tethered? I must go to the bog.”
“You must sleep,” the girl said. “The other solás, the one who died, surely sh
e had some herbs and calmatives somewhere?”
“She did.” He scrambled to his feet, realized he was naked, and pulled a robe around himself. “There is a room filled with unguents, powders, herbs, and many other such things.” Talan knew the room contained the magical workings of the soulstalker, Irjan, who had served Ava. Perhaps this child knew what to do with such things.
“Perhaps there’s something there that can help you.”
“Just rid me of this vile little man!” As he said it, his gorge twisted and he heaved onto the floor again.
“Come with me,” the child said.
He took her hand and led her down the corridor, down the eastern stairs to the second floor which housed the servants. The soulstalker’s room was locked, as Talan had ordered, so he was forced to wake his seneschal to open it.
“Do you think it wise to go into that room, my lord?” the old man asked, the strings of his nightcap caught in his beard. Stooped by the weight of his keys, Rhun had served as seneschal to Nechtan and saw his service to Talan as an extension of his loyalty to his most-loved king. It made Talan feel deserving of Rhun’s dotage.
“Wisdom has nothing to do with it, Rhun. I must sleep. Angharad says I must.”
No sooner did they have the door to the forbidden room open than the beautiful nursemaid, sent by Lyleth to look after the child, came hurrying down the corridor, her white nightgown aflutter. Talan had done the lovely girl a service, taking her from that windy isle. He would make use of her soon, if the little man in his mouth was to be believed.
“Nothing to fear,” Talan said to her, “your charge is here.” He firmly planted his hands on Angharad’s shoulders. The nursemaid’s name was Elowen, he recalled.
“Aye, my lord.” But she stayed, looking on as Angharad took a burning rush and stepped into the soulstalker’s room.
Talan’s previous solás wanted no part of this collection of strange goods. They were gathered, she had told him, to work magic of an ancient sort, to shape soul-stuff into creatures whose existence was tied to the shaper. Blood magic. Since then he had wondered if the little man inside him could have come from magic such as this.
