by Terry Madden
“Who are you?” Lyleth asked the dog-faced man who was continuing to yap at length about Fiach. No sooner had she asked than she recognized him as Glaw, the heir to IsAeron and husband to Nechtan’s niece. Yet another mistake in her many years as solás to the king.
He huffed and made a small motion to show his palms to her in supplication.
“Glaw, son of Lloyd,” she said, before he could. “Forgive me, I’m weary.”
To Nechtan’s left stood a large red-maned woman, armed and armored in the manner of the old days with a long kirtle and mail plated with horn disks. Her eyes glowed with a magic Lyleth knew too well. Her face was familiar, as one might be from a vivid dream. She could only be one of Lyleth’s ancient creations, one of the Knights of the Stoney Ring. So, they’d awakened at last, as unable as the rest of them to stop Tiernmas from reclaiming life.
Lewys cleared his throat and croaked, “This is Lyleth, solás to King—”
“I know who she is,” Nechtan and Glaw said in unison.
“How did you get out? Where is Tiernmas?” The teacher spilled questions, just as he had when he was Nechtan.
“I came to Caer Ys but a few hours before you,” she said. “I found a way out of the tunnels with a man who fought for Talan, a slave from Sandkaldr. He was wounded in the fighting in the Red Bog, and when he awoke, he was sliding into the great pit with the dead all around him. He wandered the halls like we did, and found me.”
“We?” the teacher aske.
“Yes, I had another companion.”
He seemed to take her meaning, and stopped that line of questioning.
“Together, we found the main gate,” she explained, “and then from there…it was a maze of caverns, many dead ends. We finally surfaced in the Long Vale, near Dunla’s meadstead. Do you remember…” she started to say, but realized he might or might not have any of Nechtan’s memories.
But he replied with the shadow of a sad smile. “I remember.”
Glaw had stepped between them. “We have much to discuss, do we not? Perhaps Lewys will see fit to prepare a meal.”
Nechtan’s voice rose from behind him. “Where is Angharad?” She could hear the anxiousness in his voice. He was as worried as she about their daughter.
“I never found her. But I found someone else.”
“The slave?”
“No. We must speak in private,” she said.
“I was sent to represent Fiach,” Glaw stated. “As such, I request a chair at your table, for my son is to be king. He is the last heir to Talan.”
He was right. Talan’s wife and his one living child, had taken ship and fled to Cadurques as soon as Talan had marched on Emlyn. At least, Ragnhast had told her so. Looking at the abandoned fortress here, she believed it.
“Have you looked at this man’s arm?” Lyleth asked Glaw directly.
Glaw looked jowls grew more rigid. “Any man may hire a druí to mark himself thus. It means nothing.”
“I am solás to the last king of the Five Quarters,” Lyleth decreed. She hadn’t wanted it to come to this. “Until a king is chosen, I lead this land. Now leave us. This man from the Otherworld has much to discuss with me.”
Lewys showed his palms to Lyleth. “As you command, solás.”
Dylan gave her a long look over his shoulder as he left the hall. Was he afraid for them?
The heavy doors closed, and they were alone. Lyleth’s footsteps echoed as she went to the balcony and threw open those doors. The afternoon cast long spears of warm light into the hall. The sea breeze cleared the smoke, made the torches sputter, and ruffled her now-short hair.
“Since I can’t stand, you’d better sit,” he told her.
She found a chair, brought it close, and then sat. She allowed her fingers to find his, warm and welcoming. She wanted to hold all of him in her arms, to discover this body of Hugh Cavendish and make him remember his life as Nechtan.
“Who is ‘we?’” he asked, leaning forward so his forehead rested against hers. “You said you were in the caverns with someone else. Who?”
“I found Merryn,” she confessed. “She was solás to Tiernmas a thousand years ago—”
“What do you mean, ‘found?’” he demanded, with his customary abruptness.
She recounted finding Merryn among the roots. “She’s root-born.”
“And Connor sent her,” Nechtan added, piecing it together aloud. “With his blood magic.”
“Aye,” Lyleth said.
“Where is she now?”
“She led me through Caer Sidi,” Lyleth explained. “We crossed long corridors and endless halls to the battlements. There, I battled a dead man, and when it was over, she was gone. Or, maybe she was never there at all.”
“So, you don’t know if she ran, or if she was taken,” he said with characteristic finality, ignoring the possibility that Merryn was a conjuring of Lyleth’s mind.
“If she ran, she ran right back to Tiernmas,” Lyleth said, bitterly. “And everything she told me was a lie.”
“But maybe she didn’t run. The slave who found you on the wall is proof there are others down there. Maybe she was taken.”
“Either way,” Lyleth said, “he must have her.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“You said it yourself,” Lyleth explained. “Connor sent her. Why else would he have done so if not to help Tiernmas?”
The teacher dragged his hands down his face. His weary look remained. He sighed and leaned back into the creaking chair. “Then we’ve lost before we begin this fight, and that I know you will not stand for.”
“There’s one more thing you should know,” Lyleth said, tentatively. “Connor has loved Merryn these long centuries. I doubt he will stay away for long. If Connor joins Tiernmas…”
Nechtan ran his hand over his mouth, as if holding back more questions.
“But he’s crossed over,” Nechtan said. “To the land of the dead.”
“You think that world beyond Tiernmas’s reach?”
Nechtan’s eyes locked on hers, unwavering. “Lyl…”
She ran her fingers over the tattoo on his wrist. Nechtan had been reborn without it, because the teacher had been wearing it all along. These hands hadn’t the roughness of a warrior’s, but the strength was there, and the warmth of an old soul. He opened to her like the sky after rain. He was Black Brac, he was Nechtan, and he was a teacher named Hugh Cavendish. His soul was a bright silver flame, one that had warmed her for centuries, one she could never forget, nor hope to. His needs were the same as hers…to find their daughter. To stop Tiernmas.
He stared at his hands, his voice barely a whisper. “We have much to say, and not enough time to say it. We must raise the army of Ys and attack Tiernmas before he can suck the greenflow from the land, before his army is unstoppable.”
“The fallen from the battle now carry the souls of those sacrificed to Tiernmas; at least, that’s what I think tried to kill me on those battlements.”
“What do you mean? Those who were sacrificed?”
“The halls are filled with glowing sprites,” Lyleth said, “insect-like things that are not insects at all…but souls. Sacrificed souls. They are feeding Tiernmas with greenflow, doing his bidding. And if that’s what’s happening, if the dead are vessels for these Sunless souls, then they may already be unstoppable. Tiernmas can raise all of those fallen in battle and have an army of undead warriors.”
“How do we kill things that are already dead?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But if they can be freed…then he’d have no army.”
“How?”
“The only one who might know that is Merryn,” Lyleth said.
“Or Connor,” Nechtan added. “Caradoc.”
Lewys had found some clean clothes for Nechtan. Trousers, a linen shirt and a jerkin of red leather. He looked far more like he belonged in this world now. The girl with him, Iris, had chosen trousers over a dress. Lyleth already liked her.
Their small party seemed that much smaller at the long trestle tables that lined the great hall of Caer Ys. Lewys had found some cooks who had not yet fled north. Lyleth was so hungry she’d have eaten butter from the crock.
Night had fallen, but Lyleth asked Lewys to leave the doors open to the balcony. Nechtan had rarely closed them, and only then when a gale blew in from the bay.
Their voices echoed in the empty hall. Talan’s courtiers had fled, and none but the most faithful servants remained, many of them from Nechtan’s days. Rhun, now the chamberlain, had been Nechtan’s cellarer. He had been old then, but the years had stooped the man further.
Rhun was able to explain in great detail the first days of Talan’s madness and his possession by the “little man.” Nechtan took all of it in with interest, listening intently as Lyleth explained how the followers of the Crooked One were many, their influence vast. The judges of the Wildwood had even worshipped him, all the while professing to be the voice of the green gods.
“What does Tiernmas offer his followers that they should turn their backs on the green gods?” Nechtan’s unflagging ability to ask the right questions had not left him. Neither had his habit of letting his gaze linger on Lyleth for too long. What they had shared was no secret, of course. But his gaze had been, and still was, rude.
Lyleth touched the lobe of her left ear. It had been their secret signal to let the other know they were ignoring important guests.
“Life everlasting,” Lyleth said, meeting Glaw’s eyes. It was a promise that had been made by a multitude of gods. “Never pass through the Void again, never to forget who you are, only to find yourself again right before you die.”
“To become a god, then,” Nechtan concluded, taking another bite of bread.
“If we can agree on what a god is, then maybe.” She’d always loved sparring with words, especially with Nechtan.
“Many of my own countrymen,” Glaw added, “have left offerings at the bog. The old ways never really die, they just go into hiding. We’ve never persecuted such followers.”
“We always believed them to be harmless,” Lyleth added.
“Until you raised me from the dead…” Nechtan mused, “Then everyone knew the old magic was returning. You proved the ways of the Old Blood were possible once more.”
Nechtan asked them all, “What does Tiernmas need to build this army of the Sunless?” He turned his attention back to devouring a plate of minted lamb and turnips. His appetite hadn’t changed.
“He needs to draw the greenflow from any place he can find it,” Lyleth explained. “And with it, he will place the souls of the Sunless in the corpses of anyone and anything. Like the creature who tried to kill me in Caer Sidi. Hundreds fell on the battlefield in the Red Bog, and most of them sank like Ragnhast into the hole that opened.”
“I see the deads,” Ragnhast said. He had been uncommonly quiet. His attention likely drawn by the food. “I were with them. So manys.”
“And,” Lyleth added, “Tiernmas has the bones of all who were there before, the sacrificed, even those who died in the first battle on the Plain of Slaughter. Even those provide vessels for the Sunless.”
“Can they be killed?” Glaw asked.
“That I do not know,” Lyleth said. “But to try, we must meet them in battle, or inside Caer Sidi.”
“Who would know how to get in?” Glaw demanded.
Lyleth glanced at Nechtan. She knew they were both thinking the same thing. Connor and Merryn were the only two who knew the way through Caer Sidi.
“Once again we’re back to Connor.” Nechtan glanced at the girl called Iris. Could she bring Connor back?
That night, she slept restlessly when she slept at all. Was Nechtan waiting for her to visit his room? She would not. She could not. Anything they had shared was meaningless in the face of what was to come. He’d never known Angharad. It was not even his own flesh who had conceived her, but a conjuring of the Old Blood, a cant Lyleth had learned from an inscription. This man had never been a father to Angharad, and yet he yearned to find her. Lyleth admired that in him. But she resolved to see him as the teacher from the otherworld, a man with a life she knew nothing about.
Lyleth learned the next morning that Nechtan had ceded command of the army of Ys to Glaw. He had chosen his part in this battle. He had chosen to be Hugh Cavendish, the teacher from the land of the dead, just as she thought he would.
The army of Ys was comprised of maybe three hundred trained soldiers, and as many farmers as could be paid from the limited gold in the coffers of the Quarter. Talan had squandered much of what he’d taken from Sandkaldr, it seemed. With this ragtag collection of men-at-arms, they began the march back south to Emlyn. Lyleth could only hope that Pyrs and the armies of Arvon and Cedewain had heeded her call. She’d sent riders in every direction. It should take them little more than a week of hard marching to reach Emlyn from the northern lands.
The night before they were to march south, Lyleth awaited moonrise in a wood not far from the village of Ys, a place she’d often come as solás to the king to seek the whispers of the green gods.
Here, among a jumble of gray granite, was a stone that had been carved in ages past by the hand of the Old Blood. A bowl was perfectly carved into the stone, and from it, a channel ran to a series of rings that surrounded it. Now that her memories of a distant age had returned to her, Lyleth finally knew what such a stone was used for.
She’d brought two waterskins, one filled with rainwater collected from the cistern at Caer Ys, the other filled with seawater from the bay. She spilled them both slowly into the central cup where they mixed and ran into the channel to fill the rings that surrounded it like waters around an island. The moonlight danced in the silver circles of sea and sky, cupped in the hands of the earth.
As she inserted her soothblade into the central depression, she constructed a vision of Connor in her mind, and followed where it led. When she removed her blade and looked past the reflection of her eye, past the surface of the two waters, she found him on a windy moor.
She opened her eyes behind his, saw with his eyes.
Not more than a stone’s throw from him was Brixia, and upon her back, a fire-haired child who turned to give Connor an impish grin as she set her bare heels to the pony’s flanks and rode away.
Angharad had gone after him.
Chapter 11
Connor pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head and squinted into the sun, seeking a pure view of the apparition before him. The specter of Brixia continued to carry Angharad across the highland ridge. Their passage never disturbed a blade of grass, nor left hoofprints. The two were growing smaller very fast. Connor’s walk became a jog, and still he couldn’t close the distance between him and the little horse.
With a glance over his shoulder, he saw Celeste, standing by the stone slab, her hands spread wide as if to say, “What the hell?” She’d follow—maybe. Maybe he didn’t want her to.
The only thing Connor could focus on now was keeping Angharad and Brixia in sight. Whether they were real, or just a dream, had no meaning any longer. He knew that reality was a subjective arrangement of details. The conviction of the dreamer was the only thing that makes anything ‘real.’
Though Brixia was merely walking, she and Angharad were receding from him at high speed. He broke into a full run, and still closed no distance between them. Yet they stayed in sight. Angharad halted the horse once and gazed at Connor over her shoulder, maybe to be sure he was following.
“Wait!” he called to her. But she urged the horse from the ridge into a narrow valley, thick with ferns and hawthorn. The thorns torn at Connor’s hoodie and slowed him.
Bounding down the green turf of the steep vale, Connor was beginning to lose sight of them. He tried to go faster, but lost his footing and rolled halfway down a cliff only to land at the edge of a one lane road. Looking back at the ridge above, he concluded that Celeste had not followed. She had the car now. She might head back to Corn
wall and leave him here. He needed her. Mabon was still two days away.
Panicked, he looked up and down the road for Brixi. About half kilometer away, the road took a turn. He thought he heard Brixia’s high whinny, and headed that direction.
The road ended at a carpark meant to hold a hundred cars. There were three. And no horse or Angharad in sight.
A great iron entrance gate stood beside a fake tree that was carved with the animatronic face of a Muppet-like green man. The eyes in the tree, shaded by mossy, bouncing eyebrows, rolled to look directly at Connor. The mouth clapped up and down, and the recording said, “Welcome to King Arthur’s Labyrinth. Enter if you dare!” The thing repeated it in Welsh.
Brixia came here? Ridiculous.
The entrance of what had once been, by the look of it, a mine, had been dressed up with faux rock sculptures. Campy harp music issued from a hole in the side of the cliff, and a regal stone dragon was coiled over the entrance, gripping in its claws pillars of carved Celtic interlace.
A pack of teenagers wearing red hard hats vanished inside, their laughter echoing with the music.
Connor’s palms were sweating as much as his pits. Where had Angharad and Brixia gone?
He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled as he had in the otherworld when he called Brixia. It had never really worked there either, but he thought he’d try it anyway.
Nothing.
“Ticket, love?”
A middle-aged woman approached him in a brocade gown laced up the front and down the sleeves. Sort of a too-old-to-be-Guinevere look to her.
“Uh, how much?”
He fumbled through his pockets and found a few crumpled pound notes, some coins, and his mother’s credit card. He’d left his wallet in the Five Quarters with the alewife. It contained not only the coveted ‘likeness square,’ but his own credit card, driver’s license, and everything else one needed to exist in the land of the dead. It had taken him a day to recall that he’d kept his mom’s credit card tucked away in his knapsack in case of emergencies…along with the gun Iris was now packing. The credit card company was bound to send his mom a security alert soon.
