Three Wells of the Sea- The Complete Trilogy

by Terry Madden

  Inside, it had the musty smell of an abandoned home. He assumed that since Merryn’s death, Bronwyn had taken over the management of it. With any luck, she’d removed it from the vacation rental listing.

  He found the light switch, thankful she hadn’t turned off the power.

  It was an old crofter’s cottage. A long fieldstone rectangle that had been half-heartedly divided into a living space and bedroom. The two rooms were separated by a flimsy plywood screen. The kitchen was the only upgrade that had been done since it was built, an all-in-one unit with sink and cupboards of particle board. Connor found three each of plastic plates, cups and silverware, one pot and one frying pan, and some cleansers that looked to have been there for a few decades.

  Spiders had taken over the windows and rafters.

  The hearth occupied one end of the house and had once been the only kitchen. The beam that supported the stone chimney was blackened with years of use. A collection of iron hooks that had once held cook pots riddled the old beam. Interlocking circles etched into the wood formed a common rune of protection against witchcraft and dark magic. As he ran his fingers over them, Connor wondered if the magic might smite him. Maybe it failed because there had been good in his endless lives. Laughter. Forgiveness. Love, even. Could he ever reclaim it?

  “I’m taking the bed,” Celeste proclaimed.

  “Fine.”

  The short sofa was as hard as the stone floor, and Connor had to pull his knees up to fit on it. But he slept anyway.

  In his dreams he stood upon the walls of Caer Sidi. Not the subterranean fortress he knew so well, but the risen fortress, the structure grown by Arianrhod ages before the Old Blood came. Before Connor lay the ancient wood, the forests of the Felgarth. A heavy mist rose from the trees. They exhaled, drawing life from the stone of the mountain slopes to pass it forth to creatures of the wood. Connor felt the same flow in his body, in his hands.

  Tiernmas’s voice whispered in his ear, “She’s here. She’s with me.”

  Connor whirled to face him, but awoke with a start. Birds announced the dawn, assaulting the east window of the cottage where the spiders worked.

  He rolled from the low sofa onto the cool stone floor, and then crawled to his feet. Beyond the front door, the vale, or cwm, of Corris greeted him, blushing gold with the cold touch of autumn. But not even the beauty of this place could dampen the sound of Tiernmas’s voice in his head. There was nowhere Connor could run to be free of him.

  A sick feeling gripped his belly.

  Was Tiernmas telling the truth? Had Merryn run directly into his arms again? Had Connor served Tiernmas by sending her across?

  The market in town had a limited selection of groceries, so Connor did his best—eggs, scones, and apples. He figured Celeste could easily have fled by the time he returned. But he did have her car.

  Not only had she not fled, but she hadn’t even gotten out of bed. It was almost noon when Celeste finally staggered from the bedroom, commanded by the smell of coffee.

  “It’s time to get on with it,” he stated. “Mabon falls in two days. It can’t hurt to tap into the stillness of perfect balance. It’s useful to our work.”

  Celeste was picking at the scrambled eggs Connor had made hours before. “What makes you think I’ll agree to send you?”

  “You drove away with me. That’s a commitment in my book.”

  “Maybe I need a full accounting of how you intend to coerce me into sending you back,” she said. “I mean, what’s in it for me? As all my clients would ask.”

  Whatever happened, it had better be soon. The cash the sheep shearer had given him wouldn’t go very far. “You serve Tiernmas.” Connor struggled to keep his voice emotionless. It wouldn’t do to let Celeste catch the least whiff of his true feelings. “We both seek to do as he wishes. Nothing more.”

  “I trust you, Caradoc,” she said, with a devilish smile. “Without you, I’d not be who I am today.”

  Fact. And Connor would be ashamed of it for the rest of his existence.

  “And who are you, exactly?” he pressed. “Who are these followers of yours? The Order of the Green? Have you taken up teaching yourself? Which, I remind you, is strictly forbidden by all we stand for. Have you taught them to poke around in people’s nightmares, dabble in the prophetic arts? Or are they just New Age social justice warriors who refuse to wear synthetic fabrics?”

  Celeste had slept in her gym clothes. Having been kidnapped, she hadn’t gotten to pack. She sat cross-legged on the crappy sofa, her ponytail falling out, and both hands wrapped around an oversized coffee mug as if someone might snatch it from her.

  Her mascara was smeared. She wiped at it while she digested what he’d just said.

  “My people are as harmless as the Old Blood themselves. Followers of the ‘Old Ways,’ or so they think.” She glanced around the tiny stone cottage, saying, “So you’ve got me here to send you across. What’s next? Because I’m fairly certain I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

  Connor didn’t answer. He had none, not yet.

  “Torture? Coercion? Extortion?” she prodded. “Some other –tion? Something involving blood, I’m fairly certain.”

  “You know…” Connor began. He sipped his own coffee and leaned against the Formica counter. “I don’t think I want to go back.”

  Slack-jawed, she stared at him for a long moment. “Why? Well, wait—bloody hell, I don’t really care why. I just want to be the one who goes.”

  She set her coffee on the flagstone floor, and then came at him like a long-lost cousin at a wedding. Her hands clasped his shoulders and she beamed up at him.

  “You’ll send me,” she said. “Come on now, love, say you’ll send me.”

  “I’ll send you,” he said, working very hard at sounding like he was capitulating. “You have talent. I remember well. You deserve to return. You’ll be able to serve him, possibly even as solás.”

  “But you said Merryn returned to him. His solás.”

  “It’s unclear,” he said, a note of speculation in his voice. Let her wonder what had transpired between him and Merryn before he’d sent her. Let Celeste stew on the love affair that had so riven her with jealousy. Merryn and Tiernmas. She wasn’t aware that it had gone very wrong, but she’d find out soon enough.

  She paced to the door and squinted against the morning. “When do we get started?”

  “I have some things to show you,” he said. “We work with the flow, remember. Never against it.”

  “Always the teacher, eh?” she said.

  He nodded, finished his cold coffee, and pulled on his sweatshirt. “Meet you in the car.”

  He stepped out into the crisp morning and breathed in. Across the cwm, Corris Lake reflected the scudding morning clouds and the impossible blue of the sky. Who could say there was no magic in the land of the dead?

  In the car, he gripped the wheel until his scabby knuckles turned white. The sun felt like hot honey through the windshield as he considered what he must do. An uncountable number of innocent people had died at his hands, people whose souls continued to feed a beast so ravenous, so unstoppable, that they would be forever trapped in his halls, worshipping his blinding beauty. Connor had sentenced them all to an eternity of slavery to a monster of his making. And now he felt queasy about sending someone who really wanted to go?

  What the hell was wrong with him?

  The maker and the made are forever bound.

  Like fucking vampires.

  He slapped the steering wheel and started the engine as Celeste exited the hobbit door, crossed the long-dead garden, and got in the car.

  She wore the pantsuit she must have had on when she left the office for the gym—gray, with a red blouse that looked like silk, and a string of pearls.

  “We’re going for a hike,” he said. “You might want to change.”

  “I want to look my best, and I’ve got two choices.” She grinned and pulled her white-blond hair into a fresh ponytail, tying it wi
th a jeweled band. “Let’s go.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you. We’re just exploring today.”

  She shrugged. “You’ve something to teach me, you said. Teach away.”

  He drove southeast down the narrow lane through the low mountains that formed a narrow pass to Corris village. He wanted to retrace the steps he’d taken with Merryn, trying to uncover the reason she’d brought him here in the first place. There must be something he was missing, something that might help him now.

  The sign for fresh bilberries still sat at the crossroads where Merryn had turned the day she’d taken him out. He drove several miles from there, hoping Celeste’s car would make it over the rough dirt road. He parked where Merryn had parked, at a stile formed from two ancient standing stones that had been incorporated into a rock wall.

  “Let’s go.” He stepped out of the car.

  Connor led the way. Celeste passed through the stile behind him, trying not to snag her suit on the stones. She followed slowly, her heels sucking into the soft turf, threatening to pull her shoes off with every step.

  “Sensible footwear, that is not,” Connor pointed out. “Tiernmas has otherworldly fashion sense, you know.”

  He ignored her shrug and went on ahead, leaving her to struggle behind him. He was headed for the crest of a rocky bluff where he remembered a small cairn someone had left to mark the spot. It was still there, with some additional rocks teetering on top. The wind blew fiercely, and carried the smell of the sea from many miles away. He couldn’t see Anglesey from here, but he knew that the island lay beyond the jagged range of mountains in Snowdonia.

  Kneeling in the turf, he saw only a single cup mark, as they were called. It was a hole, little more than a dimple in the recumbent grist stone. It was smooth, like the depressions left by ancient people who once ground their grain with pestles. But this hole was much smaller than mortar holes. It was about the width of Connor’s thumb. Around each cup was a series of chiseled concentric rings, as if the cups had been dropped like stones into water.

  He tugged at the grass that had grown over the slab. As it came away, more cups and rings appeared. They were filled with dirt and worms and spidery roots.

  Once cleared of grass, the large triangular grist slab was completely revealed. The point of the triangle clearly pointed in the direction of the island of Anglesey. Druid’s Isle.

  “What the hell is this?” Celeste asked, out of breath as she struggled up the hill to join him.

  “I thought you went to the gym regularly,” he said. “What would you say it is, drawing upon your vast learning?”

  “Is this a test?”

  “Sure.”

  He ran his hands over the ancient markings. A series of ring lines converged. Together, they took the vague shape of a tree with a central trunk and branches. At the ends of the branches were more cup marks. The system of converging rings was cut through by straight lines. These lines were deeper than the rings, and clearly were intended to drain something from the central cup, the largest of thirteen. As his fingers traced the cool ridges and holes, he felt what Merryn must have wanted him to feel those years ago.

  Celeste knelt beside him, her red nails tracing the lines to meet the central trunk of the “tree.”

  “A map?” She was guessing.

  “In a way. It marks the flow,” he told her, unable to stop being the teacher. “The cups are worlds. Each world is like an island amid rippling water. Each island is linked by the deep flow. The greenflow. And the wells that carry it.”

  “So, it is a map.”

  “A crude analogy, but yes.”

  “It will help us get back, how?”

  She had no sooner said the words than Connor heard the low, distinct nicker he’d come to know so well. He spun and looked behind him. There stood Brixia, not twenty meters away. The same red ribbons he’d seen in her mane when he’d first seen her were fluttering in the breeze. On her back sat Angharad, Lyl’s daughter, barefoot and dressed in a plain green shift, her fingers knotted in the pony’s mane. Though he’d seen the child briefly in the otherworld, now Connor truly saw her. He had cursed her daily for the blessings she’d bestowed upon him so long ago.

  “Arianrhod,” he declared.

  The child tucked her chin and gave him a broad, dimpled smile. She set her heels to the pony, and trotted off to the east. It was as if Brixia’s hooves never touched the ground.

  Celeste was rambling on about ley lines and geomancy. She clearly hadn’t seen the child and the horse, and Connor wasn’t about to bring it to her attention.

  He got to his feet, and followed the little horse. He could do nothing else.

  Chapter 9

  Dish was propped up in a chair fashioned from a harness yoke in the back of a two-wheeled cart. Beside him, a collection of weapons from swords to spears bounced with him over every rut in the road. They had set out for Caer Ys that morning, taking the northern road into the forests of the Felgarth. Iris and Dylan rode beside the cart; Glaw, the lord from IsAeron, rode ahead, alert for an ambush.

  The trees here were brown and tinder-dry where the insects swarmed. But in the distance, green awaited.

  Saeth was at the reins. It was as if the stone-blooded creature was growing flesh again, the cells of her body awakening like spores that have been frozen for centuries. Her gray skin was beginning to flush with life and the fire of her eyes had mellowed. When she turned to ask directions, the pupils were visible in the fiery green of her irises. Even her voice sounded less like water over a stony streambed, and more like a human’s.

  Dish had to wonder if the magical process that had preserved the Knights of the Stoney Ring had also been involved in Connor’s transfer across the Void. It had to be the work of druada of the Old Blood, and chief among them was Lyleth. After all, she had brought Nechtan back from the dead. But preserving warriors in stone?

  Dylan rode beside Iris, who struggled with the steering on her pony.

  “Oh, fuck this!” Iris finally cried. “I’d rather walk!”

  “Just let Dylan lead you. Caer Ys is a good hundred kilometers from here.”

  But Iris dragged her shaggy pony to a halt and slid to the ground. Running beside the cart, she hopped up on the plank bed so she was sitting with her legs dangling off the end, the stylishly ripped knees of her jeans gaping.

  “Just because you can’t walk doesn’t mean you get all the royal treatment.” She smiled and gave him a playful elbow. “I’ll be handicapped, too, if I ride that thing for much longer.” She pointed at the pony.

  Saeth scowled over her shoulder at Iris, the green of her eyes looking like fireflies. Iris gave her a theatrical bow in return, her palms pressed together as if she were begging for her life.

  “She scares the shit out of me.”

  “Me too,” Dish said. “Luckily she’s on our side.”

  Iris looked him over as if he were going to a job interview. Dish became painfully aware of his muddy button-down shirt, the torn navy sport jacket, and the wingtip shoes.

  “I’m not sure what you look like right now,” Iris said. “A stockbroker who got rolled in Amish country, or something.”

  “Thanks. The tie-dye fits in well, too,” he laughed, pointing at her tee shirt. “But your tattoos and piercings look like something these people would see on mercenary warriors. Men from the far south who cut out people’s tongues as trophies.”

  She crossed her arms and puffed up at that. “Really? Sweet. Now teach me to speak this fucking language, and I’ll take over.”

  She was a quick learner. He remembered from English class that she had spent more time passing notes to Connor than paying attention. She never studied, but always passed the tests.

  By the time they reached the edge of the insect-infested wasteland of Emlyn, she could carry on a short conversation with Dylan about weapons. She’d introduced a new word to the Ildana language. “Gun.” Dylan was as intrigued as everyone else.

  When they stopped for a break,
Dish noted a gathering of men around Iris. He heard the sound of the slide, and the click of the magazine. He wondered if she would explain that once the bullets were gone, she might as well throw it at an attacker.

  Back on the road, Iris sat in the back of the cart with Dish.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” she asked.

  Dish knew who ‘he’ was. He wasn’t far from Dish’s thoughts either. “Connor? Elowen is with him. She’ll get help for him on the other side. Medical help.”

  “If they reached the other side,” Iris said. Her makeup had left streaks down her face. She’d crossed with Dish for one reason alone, to find Connor. Iris had even jumped back into the well after Elowen and Connor had vanished under the surface. The guardians had rejected her. Now she was stuck here with Dish in his wing-tip shoes.

  “You had little time to react,” he consoled her. “Elowen made a decision, and they were gone. She knew he wouldn’t live long here, he was bleeding out. You’re here now. You and I have to make the best of it.”

  “And you’re the king. That helps.”

  “I’m no king, Iris. You don’t understand how things work here. The soul of a king might be hidden inside me somewhere, and you might have the soul of a queen, you don’t know. But for the Ildana, the king is chosen by the green gods as the consort of the land itself. A man of any physical imperfection is not even considered.”

  “Like Nuada,” Iris said smugly.

  Dish knew she was talking about the mythical king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a tribe that paralleled the green gods in the mythology of Ireland. Nuada lost his hand in battle, and therefore, lost his throne. Connor must have taught her some things.

  Dish said, “Maybe I’ll find someone to make me a new pair of legs, like the druids made Nuada a silver hand.”

  “It was bullshit for Nuada, and it’s bullshit for you. What does walking have to do with leading? Maybe the land of the living is not as enlightened as Connor made it out to be.”