by Terry Madden
“The salamander Angharad found in Caer Ys. She found it in a jar, not unlike the one this one was trapped in. It was on a shelf in the room that once belonged to the soulstalker. The one who…” Elowen’s eyes found Dish. He saw they were filled with tears. “The one who killed my king. Nechtan.”
“The guardian’s sister,” Ned declared with undisguised joy. “And the child has the salamander with her?”
“Aye,” Elowen said.
Dish, or Nechtan, remembered Irjan’s room well, though he purposely never went in. It reeked of death, of countless beings, all ground between pestle and mortar into dust. Dish translated for Iris as best he could. She had taken Bronwyn’s seat on the sofa and now stared at the creature with furrowed brow.
“Ceinwen’s stars are not the same,” Elowen stated.
“Stars?” Dish asked.
“The pattern there on her back,” Elowen said. “They make designs that match up to the shapes of the stars in the sky. Ceinwen’s stars were shaped like the Seven Sisters, and that’s why Angharad called her Ceinwen, but this one here, I’d say this must be a shape from this world’s sky. From the land of the dead.”
Peavey reached a reverential hand out to the salamander and whispered words in a language Dish did not understand. Certainly, words spoken between the guardians. The creature seemed to calm down and stepped out of the handbag and onto the glass table.
Peavey said in English, “The stars mark the rising of the night sky as it will be when she opens the well.”
“Then we just need to interpret them using a star map,” Dish said.
“Two salamanders,” Iris said, “one on either side. Both in jars on shelves.”
The size of a small cat, the creature climbed into Elowen’s lap and then up to her shoulder. It clung to her tee shirt with claws that looked like long fingers, terminating in razor sharp talons. As Dish leaned closer, it hissed at him. It snapped its mouth shut into an amphibian smile.
He opened his phone and snapped a photo of the constellation of golden spots on its back. He’d have to do some research on this.
“I think she’s hungry,” Elowen said. “I’ll go find her some slugs.”
**
Peavey offered to keep watch over the salamander, but Dish had no intention of trusting Peavey, or anyone else for that matter. The creature trusted Elowen, and that was enough for Dish. He rigged up a leash of sorts from some clothesline he found in Merryn’s kitchen. Elowen became tied to the thing.
Bronwyn had passed out in the bedroom and Dish had sent Peavey home, wherever that was for a well guardian, with the admonition to watch for the Sunless and alert him to any strangers on the land.
No one was to go near the salamander until he was certain of what was to happen next. It seemed that Ned was the guardian of some standard-issue life well, of which there were hundreds all over Britain. A small-time player who got promoted somewhere along the way, or maybe enslaved, by Merryn. Her task of keeping the third well of the sea hidden from the Sunless had been her duty from the start. And now that duty had fallen to Dish, if he had put the pieces together correctly.
Iris made sandwiches.
She bit into hers, saying, “Ned took Connor across to the other side and just left him there.” She washed it down with whisky. “He’s an evil fuck.”
“I don’t think he’s lying about the Sunless.”
“He could be one of them himself,” Iris said.
Merryn had left the book here in her house for Dish to find. Or Connor. After all, she left all her books to Connor. If she’d wanted to keep it from Connor, she’d have put it elsewhere, or given it to Ned to keep elsewhere. No, Merryn wanted Dish or Connor to find the stone, for it marked the well in space, if not time.
Iris scooped a fall of black hair behind her heavily studded ear and poured another glass of whisky for Dish. “On the other hand,” she said, “Have you ever considered that Merryn might be one of these ‘Sunless’?”
He laughed. “Not for a moment.” How could that be true? Then he replayed the scenario of her death, Connor’s task of bleeding her and using her blood to send her back. Clearly blood magic. There was no denying it. But it didn’t mean she was Sunless, just that she had used their magic for her own ends.
“If that were so,” Dish said, “why would Merryn leave this for me to find?” He waved the book again.
“I don’t know,” Iris said.
Dish took a swallow. “If the way between the worlds is opened,” he said, “and the Old Blood return to their land… there will be war. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless the king of the Ildana welcomes them. Makes peace.” As he said it, the possibility became real. Maybe Lyl was going through the same thought process, working out all possible outcomes.
“What are you thinking?” Iris pressed.
“Talan is Sunless. He’s taken Angharad as his solás because he knows she will be the one to call the Old Blood home. The Ildana won’t stand a chance when they come through.”
His mind reeled. He tried to think the way Lyl would think. She would do everything in her power to take Talan down. If she was successful, Angharad would be the only blood of Nechtan’s left alive. She would sit on his throne. But could she prevent a war? Dish was afraid to consider the options available to Lyl, especially with Angharad at Talan’s side; his leverage could not be stronger.
Just then, another knock came at the front door.
“Oh, bloody hell,” Dish whispered. “Celeste.”
“What?”
He took a deep breath and started for the door. “We have a date.”
Chapter 22
The moon had reached zenith while Lyleth and Connor gazed into the darkness of their souls. As the vision passed, Connor had to force himself to breathe again, to return to the weakened body he had left beside a fire in the woods. The darkness he had seen in that soothblade hid in every part of his being.
How could he not have known who he was?
The horror of a single lifetime weighed him down with grief, and he wanted nothing more than to die, to be cradled in the great oblivion of the Void.
He felt Lyleth’s eyes on him, and could not meet them. He threw his soothblade into the dying fire and tried to get to his feet. He wanted to run as far from Lyleth as he could. He got to his knees and then staggered to his feet, but his failing body gave way and collapsed.
Lyleth gazed down at him, the black snake of her braid touching his cheek. “I don’t know whether to pity you, or kill you.”
She placed the tip of her soothblade to Connor’s throat. “I choose the later.”
The blade dug deeper into his throat, but Dylan knocked it from her hand.
“In the name of stars and stones!” he cried, “What are you doing?”
“Let her be,” Connor demanded.
Lyleth took Connor by the hair, yanked his head back and exposed his neck. He made no move to fight her.
“If I cut you,” Lyleth raved, “will worms fall from your throat like Talan’s?”
“Do it,” Connor begged her, “and you’ll know the answer.”
“What’s going on?!” Dylan demanded.
“Leave us,” Lyleth told him.
“Not for a second. Some kind of madness has seeped into your brains. From those – those blades of yours. Connor’s done you no wrong, Lyl.”
“Hasn’t he now? Not in this life, maybe.”
“Stay out of this, Dylan,” Connor said.
But he took hold of Lyleth and forcefully dragged her away from Connor.
She shook him off, saying, “The soothblade you thought was Merryn’s is yours, just as this one,” Lyleth waved her blade before him, “is mine. Merryn knew we would end up here, you and me, exposing our pasts like buried bones. And what did she think would happen next? That I would let the blood scribe of Tiernmas live?”
“What?” Dylan cried. “Blood scribe?”
Connor drew his knees to his ch
est and hung his head between them. “Just do it. Please.”
“I picked up green stones in the river and walked through a hundred lives… but there was one that changed the fate of an entire people. In that one life, I was a druí of the Old Blood,” Lyleth said. “I honored the green gods and led the revolt against the Crooked One and his blood scribe, the shaper of sap and serum, sinew and bone. I lost that battle. Against you.”
She paced around the dying fire, saying, “Yet Merryn let you live. Merryn wanted this moment to come.”
“She thought I had changed,” he said, remembering another lifetime spent with Merryn, learning to temper his skills into something akin to healing, more like a defiance of death. “She thought she had redeemed me.”
“And did she?”
“Nothing can lift the darkness from my soul. Not even Merryn.”
He felt Dylan’s cold blade at his neck, his brotherly concern replaced with fear, no doubt. Who would let the blood scribe of Tiernmas live?
Dylan said, “Give me the word, Lyl.” But his hand was quaking. Connor could feel it through the blade.
He closed his eyes and waited for the blow, but felt only warm breath on his face. He opened his eyes as Brixia’s velvety muzzle touched his cheek.
Lyleth must believe as Connor did that Brixia was the messenger of the gods. But whose gods? In all the stones he drew from the river, Connor never saw Brixia with him.
“He’ll bleed to death soon enough,” Lyleth decided. “Sheathe your sword, Dylan.”
“You have to end this!” Connor clutched at Lyleth’s hand. “Let me forget, let me start over again.”
“And not find out what you’re here for? Merryn has some grand plan. I have a grand plan, one that I am wary of, in truth. But I’ve no other path to follow now but hers. And mine.”
Frantically, Connor began to tear the bandage from his arm to let the blood flow freely. Bleeding to death was easy. He’d inflicted it enough times. But he didn’t deserve to die so peacefully.
Lyleth put her hand on his, struggling to calm her voice. “You’ll just find yourself again, you know.”
“I can’t go back there!” Connor felt panic welling in his breast. She was going to take him to the bog.
She went on in that falsely placid voice, “The truth is, the well will open with or without you.” She began roughly rewrapping the bandage on his arm. “You’re here for a reason. What that might be, I couldn’t say. But Angharad brought you here. Brixia protects you. I intend to find out why.”
“I can’t face him when he wakes,” Connor pleaded. “I’ll never serve him again. Never.”
Connor had sculpted a king from the malformed body of a ruthless, grasping man. He had shaped the life force of a thousand sacrificed children, had made Tiernmas into more than a king, he’d made a demon-god. And when Talan awakened him… Connor could not be there.
“You made him,” Lyleth demanded. “You can unmake him.”
“Some things cannot be unmade.”
“Yet the river of time can be diverted before returning to its course to the sea,” she said.
Lyleth, of all people, would know that to be true. She’d brought Nechtan back from the dead; she had found her way back to the Five Quarters so that she could bring forth the child who would set the Old Blood free.
“Without you beside him,” she said, “the Crooked One will not prevail.”
He gave a hopeless laugh and wiped at his tears.
She sat down beside him, saying, “You are a different man now. Your allegiance is to a different king.”
**
As the first light of dawn warmed the east, Connor stared into the darkness of the trees while Lyleth slept. Brixia lay on the soft ground beside him, curled up like a dog. With Brixia’s help, Connor had once floated between the worlds on an eddy of green magic. He wanted to be there again. There he understood what he’d known all along, that every atom, every molecule in the universe vibrated in unison with sound and light. There was only one forest, one sky, one sea, one great living beast. Once he had known how to gather it up, reshape it from the inside, not like the crude machines in the land of the dead that manipulate rigid principles of physics. Connor knew how to harvest the resonant hum of existence, amplify and direct it, to reorder atoms and molecules, to sculpt with the hands of will.
The universe sings with blood and bone, star and stone, and its song was all he could hear anymore.
He recalled with painful accuracy that day from a thousand years ago as if it happened yesterday, the smell of the damp bog air, of rotting moss soaked with blood. He was a captive of Black Brac. The battle that had been waged for three days left the plain covered with the dead and the sky black with crows. The deal had been struck. The king of the Ildana used a silver axe to sever Tiernmas’ head with a single stroke. And though it kept talking, he packed the head with cedar oil and wrapped it in the hide of a white mare. He placed it in a box carved from yew wood. His druada worked the spell, Lyleth among them. She was a druí of the Old Blood who chose to share her knowledge with the Ildana in an attempt to defeat the Sunless. A traitor of sorts. But they had not defeated Tiernmas, they’d only delayed him.
The head kept talking from inside its casket of yew until the twelve noble knights of the Ildana were sacrificed, and the river of their blood found the opening between the worlds and the third well sprang forth.
Connor was washed away with the rest, with warriors and mothers and babes. They shed their human forms and became a thousand silver fish swimming in the pools of the Otherworld. There, they were netted by the dead, eaten and born into exile.
In spite of her allegiance to the king of the Ildana, Lyleth was swept away in the third well with the rest of them. She left behind her lover, Black Brac, only to find him again in the shape of Nechtan on the eve of the Old Blood’s return. Connor found it ironic that Nechtan had fathered the Child of Death. The green gods had a sense of humor, at least.
Connor glanced at Dylan to find the man staring at him from his perch on a mound of boulders that overlooked their camp and the plain below. Dylan was on watch, and Connor was clearly the biggest threat around.
Something caught Dylan’s eye. He raised his bow slowly, loosed an arrow, then jumped to the ground and picked up a rabbit by the ears, his arrow clean through its middle. Its hind legs slowly stopped kicking.
“Breakfast!” he called.
Lyleth roused. The look on her face said she had been in a far more beautiful reality in her dream world. Then she saw Connor’s face, and hatred reminded her of where she was.
Dylan set to cleaning the rabbit, while Lyleth made her way to the rocky overlook to take his place on watch. Dylan expertly sliced the rabbit’s skin until he could pull it off over its head like a tee shirt.
“We haven’t time to cook it,” she called from the rocks. “The army prepares to march. The wagons are moving below. How could you not see that, Dylan?”
“Your eyes are better than mine,” Dylan said. “’Tis a waste not to eat this rabbit.”
Connor glanced from the ashes of the fire to the skinned rabbit. “Let me see it,” he told Dylan.
He took the rabbit carcass from Dylan and draped it over his knees. Then he dipped the tip of his soot-blackened blade into the blood that seeped from his arm.
He laid the flat edge of the blade between the rabbit’s eyes and slowly dragged it between its ears and down its skinless spine. As he did, he drew the green flow from his own body, from the living things that surrounded him, from the stones that slept and dreamt of other worlds. The green flow. The energy he had forgotten, the force that drives the sap through branch and root, the force that pumps the blood through flesh and opens the eyes of the soul.
The grass around him withered, turned to ash, as did every stem and flower. Everything that lived to the edge of the woods charred and blackened with the unseen fire he commanded. It flowed toward him like lightning to a tall tree. He forced it to the tips of h
is fingers as he dipped them into his own blood. He drew on the rabbit carcass with green fire, conducting life through his body to the flesh before him. A faint glow followed the trail of his fingers, and the design brightened. When the drawing was complete, the rabbit moved with a convulsive twitching, its legs churning as if it ran across open ground. It leapt to its feet. Connor’s design pulsed over its body like a heartbeat, a spiral tattoo of golden light, a blood rune.
It hopped from his lap, still skinless, but as it moved away, wings peeled from its bare muscle. The rabbit ruffled the blood red feathers and tested them for flight, but not before it glanced back at Connor, its eyes the same copper color as his own.
He felt the tip of Dylan’s sword rest once again at the base of his skull.
“’Haps he shouldn’t live after all,” Dylan said.
“Truer words were never spoken,” Connor replied. He sat in the middle of a circle of death, having sucked the green flow from everything around him.
“Tie his hands,” Lyleth said. “He’s our prisoner now.”
As Dylan set to work binding his wrists, Connor said to Lyleth, “You must remember everything, just as I must. This will not be a battle of steel against steel, Lyl.”
“Aye. But which side will you be fighting for, blood scribe?”
Chapter 23
Talan awoke in the room that was not his. A room in Caer Emlyn. There were guards at the door. He could hear them talking. Was he a prisoner? Where was the child?
Angharad had given him one of her draughts, the one that quieted the little man so Talan could sleep.
The room was dark but for one particle of light. It drifted in from the window, a bit of thistledown encased in a warm green glow. Just out of Talan’s reach, it hovered and watched him with loving eyes. His mother’s arms closed around him, and the panic receded. The wound on Talan’s neck throbbed, reminding him of Lyleth’s weak attempt to free him. He touched the place where her blade had cut. No blood, no worms. Nothing but new skin.
“Come with me, my beautiful boy,” his mother whispered.
