Three Wells of the Sea- The Complete Trilogy

by Terry Madden

  “Haha,” Tiernmas laughed. “Your green sister lives, Idwylc!”

  Her eyes fluttered. But even in the variable light of the torch Tiernmas could see that it was the life force of a tree that filled her shell. A green flush came to her cheeks. Her eyes began to moisten with life, but they stared beyond the stone walls of the cavern at the realm of a distant forest. Blind to Tiernmas and Idwlyc, hers was the discourse of those who moved through time, not space. Her own soul coursed through Tiernmas’s veins now, hers and those of a thousand others who had spilled themselves into him so he might live. His ineptitude had raised her with the soul of a tree, not her own soul. He felt that essence stir in his breast. She, and countless others had given him life. For this one, he would find a way to give it back. He owed her that much.

  Chapter 7

  After the first series of tremors, it became clear to Lyleth that the quakes were not destroying Caer Sidi, but repairing it. Where most shakes would dislodge dirt and masonry, these lifted fallen blocks and placed them where the green gods had in the first days of earth. They reformed pillars and conduits that carried water from the well outward, through a series of canals and cascades. With each successive quake, the walls pieced themselves together, defying the laws of nature and the forces of destruction.

  Lyleth cupped her hands and drank from the water running in the conduit she and Merryn had been following. It tasted as sweet as light. Merryn knelt beside her and drank as well. The glowing insects gave them enough light to see a stone’s throw in either direction. Just at the edge of the blue-green glow, Brixia waited for them to follow, knee-deep in water.

  “It’s as if the world above has fallen, releasing the shackles that held Caer Sidi bound to the Void.” Merryn wiped at her mouth. They had been crawling through dark tunnels for so long, it was the first time Lyleth realized Merryn was naked as a newborn. She was a babe after all. Root-born.

  Lyleth pushed through the flowing water after Brixia, sending the glowing bugs into clouds of green light.

  “It’s rising,” Merryn proclaimed and lifted her arms as if calling the fortress from the Earth.

  “But how can that be?” Lyleth asked. “When shaping the greenflow, we can only work with the balance, not against it.”

  Merryn turned an ecstatic face to Lyleth, brushing dark hair out of her eyes. “The magic of the green gods built this place. It’s like no magic you or I have ever known. Only Caradoc knows the runes.”

  Under her breath, Lyleth corrected, “Caradoc and any he trained in his blood magic.”

  “If that’s how you see it…” Merryn said.

  “Do you know the way out?” Lyleth grew tired of this meaningless banter.

  “Of course,” Merryn said, “At least, I knew the way once.”

  “The dead live here, now,” Lyleth said. “The souls of the sacrificed, the souls chained to Tiernmas by Caradoc…by Connor.”

  “You don’t know Caradoc as I know him.”

  “Right you are there,” Lyleth scoffed. “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

  “What do you mean?” Merryn asked in disbelief. “When would you have had such a chance?”

  Lyleth recalled that Merryn had begun her journey through the tree before Connor had found Elowen in the stream. Merryn knew nothing of Connor’s time here in the Five Quarters. Lyleth decided it was best to give her no more information than necessary.

  “He was here. For a short time.”

  “Here?” Merryn stopped walking. By the light of the insects, her eyes grew wide with questions.

  Lyleth tried to avert them. “He was here long enough to look into that soothblade you gave him. So clever you are—his own blade.”

  “He knows.” Merryn said it as if she were keening.

  “If you didn’t want him to see his past, why did you give him his blade?”

  When she didn’t respond, Lyleth answered for her. “Because you need him. Tiernmas needs him. To build an army that cannot be defeated by men, he needs Connor.”

  “I hope,” Merryn said in all earnestness, “that you come to know Tiernmas as I know him.”

  “I’m sorry, but I doubt I will see past the man’s murder of countless innocents.”

  Merryn’s bright face dimmed at the truth, and she turned away. Her naked skin glowed almost as brightly as the insects. Had Merryn only used Connor? Or did she still feel the friendship she proclaimed they shared?

  “It was Connor who showed you your memories in the soothblade.” Merryn stated, putting the pieces together without much help from Lyleth.

  “Aye,” Lyleth confessed. “I should have killed him for that alone. You taught him, he said. How to retrieve these memories. Where did you learn such things?”

  “The teachers become students, do they not?” Merryn asked, and that was it. No more explanation about how she found her past from one lifetime to the next. Lyleth had to believe it was a game of revolving doors.

  “Come,” Merryn said, pointing to a branch in the conduit. “This goes to the canals.”

  Lyleth wasn’t ready to let this drop so easily. “It’s why you came back,” she stated coldly. “It’s why you protected the well all these centuries. The solás has returned to her lord king. Together, you and Tiernmas will reign over the Halls of the Sunless. But it will be nothing more than the destruction of the balance you once so passionately defended.”

  Merryn took a step closer to Lyleth, so the breath from her lips brushed her face. “I betrayed Tiernmas,” Merryn growled. “Caradoc and I…we gave him up. To your Black Brac.”

  Tears welled in her eyes and her fists were balled at her side. “Not even that can redeem us in the eyes of the Ildana,” Merryn said. “Their fear of us is so great. And now, you are one of them. Why don’t you kill me? You think Connor sent me to return to my king, to make him strong again and give birth to the land of the everliving. So…kill me.”

  When Lyleth failed to move against her, Merryn vanished into another doorway. The glowing insects followed Merryn like an aura, their light revealing a spiral stair that was narrow and hard to climb. The steps had been worn by centuries of boots. And by the light of the little creatures, Merryn led the way up. “Come only if you trust me. For I might lead you directly to Tiernmas. Or…you can try to find your own way, sister.”

  Lyleth hesitated, and looked back at the darkened tunnel of flowing water behind her. Merryn was right. If she had come back to serve Tiernmas, she would go to him now. Lyleth had spoken out of fear and old misgivings. If Merryn could lead them out, they might find their way back to Fiach. Connor might still be alive and with the teacher…And the teacher, the crippled man with Nechtan’s eyes…perhaps he’d survived the crossing of the Sunless. Let them judge Merryn. Lyleth had no choice but to trust her. For now.

  She started to call for Brixia, but as she glanced back to the watery channel, she found the little horse had gone.

  Lyleth wrapped Merryn in her cloak, more to protect her from the stone walls in the narrow stairwell. The corridors here were warm and moist. It was like crawling about in the lungs of a giant beast.

  The dim glow of the swarming insects made the staircase before them barely visible. They had ascended many floors by now, but Merryn had not paused in her upward spiral. She did not hesitate before the multitude of doorways and corridors they passed, but seemed sure of the way.

  Lyleth finally broke the silence between them. “I want to hear it from you.”

  “What do you need to hear, sister?”

  “What happened after I left the court of Tiernmas at Caer Sidi?” Lyleth had stayed long enough to try to take Merryn with her. She had left her own people behind, the Old Blood, and placed herself under Black Brac’s protection. “Or, as you see it, after I deserted my own people to side with the enemy.”

  “You’ve heard it told so many times, you must be bored of it,” Merryn snapped, breaking through a barrier of spider webs that had trapped some of their glowing insect helpers.


  “Oh, aye.” Tales told to scare children on long winter nights. “But I want to hear it from your lips. I want to know what you and Caradoc planned to gain from your actions.”

  “We planned to gain nothing.” She stated firmly. “We planned to run and let the Ildana deal with the mess we’d made. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “No,” Lyleth said. “I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s what the Ildana have claimed we did. Why should you doubt them? Your adopted family?”

  “Because you’re my sister of the green. Nothing can change that.” They had spent twenty years together on the Isle of Glass. It was Lyleth whom Merryn had sought to weep with when she was chosen as solás to the young king, Tiernmas’s brother. Elgar was a brutal man. No one mourned when Tiernmas openly killed him, least of all Merryn.

  Lyleth often wondered if Tiernmas’s actions were driven by his loathing for his brother, or his lust for Merryn. Neither one made a good king.

  Merryn finally turned to look into Lyleth’s eyes, saying, “Then believe this…on the eve of the battle, Caradoc was to bleed himself, to create a creature so destructive, so brutal, so…baneful that the Ildana would die by the thousands before it. He was to use a bull for the conjuring, and he would sap the greenflow from an entire forest to shape it. He would give the creature the wings of a raven and the poison of a snake and the flesh-ripping fangs of a wolf. It would be armored with obsidian scales, immune to human weapons. It would be a blood beast like none he’d ever created, an aberration, a ‘demon’ they would describe it in the land of the dead. Like the beasts they speak of in their tales of distant times.”

  “And the Ildana could never have beaten it,” Lyleth concluded. This part of the tale she’d never heard before. It made her think of the rabbit Connor had transformed into a skinless flying beast, and Lyleth in her desperation to bring down Tiernmas, had asked him to change her into just such a beast.

  Merryn gave a rueful laugh and sat down on a worn step, breathing hard from the climb up the stairs. She wrapped Lyleth’s cloak around herself more tightly, and the little glow bugs circled her head like a wreath.

  “Had he made the beast,” she said, “it would have ended the Ildana’s assault of our shores. Any survivors would have fled to their ships. But Caradoc came to me the evening before the battle. He was prepared to hand over our land to an invader rather than to see Tiernmas continue to rule. If he’d made the beast, we would not have spent a thousand years among the dead.”

  “But he won the argument,” Lyleth concluded, knowing that Merryn would have defended Tiernmas. “How did Connor convince you?”

  Even in the near-darkness, Lyleth could see the sorrow on Merryn’s face as she said, “’Even flowers cannot stare eternally into the sun,’ he told me. Caradoc understands. He is a servant of death. A blood scribe. Balance is everything. He sees what the rest of us hide from.”

  Lyleth sat on the step beside her.

  “Aye,” Lyleth said distantly. “And there is only one who can unmake what he has created.”

  Merryn’s gaze turned blankly to the hovering insects. “You say Connor is here, in the Five Quarters?”

  “He was so near death when I left him, he couldn’t still live.”

  Lyleth knew there was something no legend had told. That Caradoc had loved Merryn, and though she was bound body and soul to the immortal king, some part of her had loved Caradoc in return. If Merryn chose to tell her no more, it wouldn’t matter. The look she wore revealed everything.

  “We tied ourselves together,” Merryn said softly. “And to the rope, we tied two bags of stones. We walked into the sea near Caer Ys. Into the Bay of Serpents. So deep would we sink that Tiernmas would never find our bodies, never be able to bring us back.”

  They had exiled themselves and, in doing so, had saved the Ildana from certain destruction.

  Lyleth felt ashamed. She’d judged Merryn before she knew the truth. Lyleth stood, reached a hand to Merryn, and then helped her to her feet.

  Merryn held Lyleth’s hand for several seconds. “Let’s see what can be done now.”

  Merryn led the way through one more turn in the stairwell until she stood at the remains of a rotting wooden door. She had only to push on the wood and it fell to pieces in her hand. She stepped through into what might have been a hall.

  The glow bugs spilled through the door. As their numbers increased, so did the view. Trestle tables stood in ranks. Barrels lined one wall as if waiting to fill unseen cups with ale. A single roof beam had fallen in, dumping broken furniture and clothing from the floor above. Beadwork of freshwater pearls caught Lyleth’s eye. She could just discern that it was a gown and had once been red, now faded to a gray-pink. When Lyleth touched it, threads came away in her hand, and pearls bounced to the floor. It might have been Merryn’s gown a thousand years ago.

  As the insects spiraled up into the high rib vaults of an arched ceiling where Lyleth could see chandeliers that still held candles. Bats startled and flew making their piping cries as they flapped among the glow bugs, snapping them up.

  “Come,” Merryn said. “It’s not far now. And we’ll lose our light if we tarry any longer.”

  After a series of corridors, Merryn opened another rotten door into what she said was an armory. Indeed, there were weapons waiting in racks—spears, shields and swords set with polished stones. But when Lyleth took one in her hand, the blade shattered into a fall of rust, leaving nothing but the silver filigree that had been worked on the hilt. Searching through the racks, she found a stave of hardwood, untouched by rot. It would be wise to have something to use as defense other than her small soothblade.

  “Here,” Lyleth said, handing the stave to Merryn, “take this.”

  Grasping the wooden handle of a flail, she gave the spiked ball a swing, expecting the chain to break away, but it had not rusted through. the ball of steel spikes was too dense to rust completely, though the spikes had crumbled, leaving a knob of rusty steel. She swung it a few times to recheck the chain. It was better than her soothblade.

  “If these are all the weapons Tiernmas can muster, we might stand a chance.”

  Merryn turned and gave Lyleth a frightened flash of her eyes. “You say a battle was waged, and many fell.”

  “Aye. The men of Emlyn tried to stop Talan. Many died in the Red Bog before Angharad opened the well.”

  Merryn nodded solemnly. “Then Tiernmas will have weapons, and men a-plenty.”

  Lyleth’s stomach growled loudly. How long had it been since they’d left the well? Hours? Days? Lyleth and Merryn had been wandering the caverns and tunnels without daylight. By the empty feeling in her guts, Lyleth guessed it had been at least a day. She and Merryn had drunk from the water in the well channels, but she was beginning to thirst again, and her legs had the weak feeling that comes with lack of food. And Angharad…the child would be just as hungry. Unless Tiernmas had found her. Lyleth refused to let the thought take hold. No, Angharad had to know her way out. She was touched by the gods, they would lead her out.

  After leaving the armory, they crossed long galleries supported by pillars like trees. A canal ran through the middle of one such gallery. Lyleth thought she saw fish in the water, but the light from the glow bugs was fleeting. She could have imagined it.

  Merryn began to take wrong turns, or at least, Lyleth believed them to be wrong. A courtyard that looked like it had once had terraces planted with vegetables and flowers, had crumbled into a mass of stone and mortar. Newly cut greenstone had begun to fill in the ruined places with each successive tremor. It produced a strange patchwork of the ancient and the new.

  In the center of the garden, a fountain sculpture remained. It reminded Lyleth of the Cernos, a spirit of the wood, and it might be just that. The mouth gaped and the darkness of its gullet brought to mind stories every child was told. To place your hand in the Cernos’s mouth would prove the truth of your words. For if you were false, the Cernos would take your
hand, and your arm too, if he fancied it.

  When they finally exited onto what had once been battlements, it was impossible to tell where the walls stopped and the cavern began. It was as if the cavern had grown around the fortress walls like a tree grows around a stone. High above them, a cavernous roof was hung with stalactites like chandeliers, and glowworms gave it the appearance of a night sky filled with stars. Lyleth knew the dark expanse that pooled below her was the inner ward, the old training ground. Not a single one of the glow bugs illuminated the inner ward. It occurred to her that the swarm surrounding Merryn marked their presence clearly.

  They had gone so far on the battlement catwalk that they surely must have reached the barbican. Lit by the faint glow of the insects, it became clear that a fall of rocks blocked their path. The avalanche had severed the outer curtain wall.

  “Now where?” Lyleth asked Merryn.

  Merryn pressed her back to the wall and slid down until she was sitting on the flagstones. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “The gate…the outer gate. It was here. But it’s all buried.”

  Lyleth sat beside Merryn and pulled her into a tight embrace. “We’ve got to be close then, right?”

  Merryn melted into Lyleth’s arms, and she stroked her friend’s hair. In that moment, they were girls again on their first night in the hive on the Isle of Glass. Left by their fathers to serve the green gods, they had clung to each other, become family to each other. Now, it was as if the centuries were but days.

  How long would it be before Tiernmas found them here?

  The cloud of insects had dwindled. One of them landed on Merryn’s dark hair. Lyleth looked more closely, confirming what she thought she’d only imagined. The body was human-shaped. Maybe it was the flesh-colored body that gave it the illusion, though its appendages seemed like arms, with hands closing on strands of Merryn’s hair. Its wings were three times its body size, a double set, like a dragonfly’s, translucent and veined in the same glowing material as its abdomen. She thought the little thing turned its head. It had the eyes of a reasoning entity. Not an insect at all. More like a sprite.