Three Wells of the Sea- The Complete Trilogy

by Terry Madden

  All of this was Angharad’s idea. What did she expect of him? He ran through her words for the thousandth time. She had said, “…it is time to pay your debt. Unmake that which you have made, free the Sunless, and return me to my halls in Caer Sidi. For maker and made are one. Ye must rend him, ye must end him.”

  Rend him and end him. That hadn’t gone so well.

  Connor surmised that all the dead that once filled the outer ward had been spent against Pyrs and his army. If it weren’t for Connor’s conjuring the dragon, Pyrs might be inside already.

  The labrys was covered with muck. Connor was forced to excavate it. Weak and dizzy, he finally tucked the axe into the holster he’d fashioned from Celeste’s bra. Now to get her something to eat.

  He pulled the cloak over the bulk of the axe on his back and made his way toward the keep. It towered like a living mountain in the center of the snaking walls. Parapets had sprouted, twisting around the central axis and blossoming with balconies and catwalks. Green leaf to green stone, just as it had always been.

  Once inside, he skirted the great hall, empty of courtiers, but lit by torches. It was night and the sunstones would not be lit. A torch here and there was augmented by a small swarm of the Sunless that seemed to grow as he moved along.

  There is little difference between exile to perpetual death and exile to perpetual life, which these Sunless suffered. Either way, the soul-seed cannot grow into the eternal tree of the self. It remains a seed, un-sunned and unnourished by the waters of love and strife and change, trapped in day or night and never learning of the other.

  Life eternal is an empty promise in any world.

  Arianrhod would not allow it.

  “I’m here to free you,” he whispered, over and over to the sprites. “Help me, and you will know life again.”

  Their insectoid heads turned to face him, multifaceted eyes reflecting each other’s luminescence. The high song of their voices whirred in argument.

  It could go either way. If they really did understand who he was, they could communicate that to Tiernmas, if their loyalties to him were true. Connor would have to trust them. He had no choice now.

  He stumbled. Celeste’s hunger made her lightheaded. He had to find food.

  Lit only by the Sunless swarms, it was difficult to get his bearings. Connor felt his own body as nothing but a remembered dream, lying in the labyrinth somewhere with his companions watching over him. But his conscious mind moved with purpose inside Celeste.

  The corridor that ran into darkness on the north side accessed the living quarters of the servants.

  He stepped through the door that led to a room that had once been the servants’ dining hall. He’d been in this room only a few times in his previous life. Long trestle tables had once bustled with foraging guards and house servants.

  At last, he found the remains of a serving tray. He tried to slow down, but ended up stuffing the bits of bread and smoked salmon into his mouth. He washed it down with ale that he drank directly from a pitcher. After licking the plate, he moved into the corridor that led to the soldiers’ quarters. Beyond that lay his own chambers. No one would disturb his rooms, he thought. Why would they? Who but Celeste might know what to do with his collection of herbs and oils, animal parts and stones?

  Once inside the soldiers’ barracks, he found rows of bodies in grotesque jumbles, the smell of rot smoldering like a fire. By the look of their sigils, these dead were soldiers of Emlyn and Ys. Not Pyrs’s men. These corpses had fallen in battle weeks before when the well had opened.

  What were they doing here?

  Connor could only conclude that they represented Tiernmas’s last defense if Pyrs ever gained entrance to the keep. It would make sense that Tiernmas would not send all of his undead army out to battle. He needed to hold some back, just in case.

  Connor gazed at the flitting souls.

  “The maker and the made are one,” he said to them. “It was I who imprisoned you. And I who will free you.”

  Connor found a sharp knife tucked in a fallen warrior’s belt. He cut Celeste’s arm, just slightly, and let a trickle of her blood spill into a cast-off drinking horn. Not too much…he needed her strength to do what he’d come to do.

  He dipped two fingers into the cup, then opened the mouth of a most proficient looking dead fighter. He wore scale mail and carried not one sword, but two. His helm had the dents of one who had seen battle. Connor let the blood drip between the dead man’s lips, binding that flesh to his, actually, to Celeste’s. As he did, one of the Sunless passed between the lips with the blood, and within moments, was pushing its greenflow through the livid and stinking mass, pulling on the flesh like pants and shirt.

  When the creature stood before Connor, the vacancy of its smoldering dead eyes showed no allegiance. It was less animated than the Sunless sprite that wore it—an automaton, a hand puppet. Connor would have to trust the Sunless sprite who was in the driver’s seat. “Help me, and I will free you.”

  The risen man planted the sword point on the floor and knelt before Connor.

  Like wind through a dead wood, the creature said, “Maker and made are one.”

  Connor raised eight warriors and knew that the thirty or more bodies that remained awaited Tiernmas’s command. With the help of the eight, they struck the heads from every other body in the hall. Thousand-year-old lard had turned rock hard in its barrel, but the tallow, stored in skins that flaked away as Connor touched it, was more useable. He melted this down in a large pot over a quickly kindled fire. Once it was liquified, he poured the tallow over the remaining bodies and set them ablaze.

  This wing of the castle would soon draw attention, but before it could, Connor would find his way to his own chambers. With his eight resurrected bodyguards, Connor led the way toward stairs that would take him to the spire.

  It was time to start repairing the balance that had been disrupted with the exile of the Old Blood, and the imprisonment of these Sunless souls. The symmetry of existence had been rent, like a wound on the weave of a fractal fabric. The whole depended upon the smallest unit. A sunflower’s perfect whorl could not exist if it was scarred. That was why Arianrhod had returned, he concluded. She didn’t care so much for these souls flitting around Connor’s head as she did for the symmetry of the universe. That was what mattered to her, as it should.

  Connor had been the one who left that scar upon both worlds.

  He reached his chambers on the fifth floor and found the door barricaded from within. It took his eight bodyguards a few minutes to force their way inside.

  They were met by Saeth and Ragnhast, swords drawn and ready to cut through the undead guards to reach Connor, dressed as he was in Celeste’s body.

  “Hold!” The voice came from a man, deep in the shadows.

  “Stay your hand!” Connor commanded the eight Sunless, and they retreated to his side, flanking him in the doorway.

  Again, the voice issued from the shadows.

  “Celeste?” Dish’s voice asked.

  “Dish? It’s me, Connor…and Celeste.”

  As it turned out, Saeth and Ragnhast had followed when Dish and Lyl were taken to the labyrinth. When the opportunity presented itself, they’d jumped the guards and freed them. Lyl used her druí’s intuition to feel her way to Connor’s old quarters. She was familiar with his equipment, the herbs and other stock, and knew she could use some of them herself. They’d holed up here for the day, hoping it had been sealed with protective runes, which of course, it had.

  Connor had spent no more than a dozen years of his multitude of lives here, and yet…it felt like someone had locked him in an airless chamber that was sinking into the Void. Everything was just as he’d left it the night he and Merryn had fled Caer Sidi to make their way to the sea, and the embrace of its depths. His bed stood plumped with feather pillows and silk coverlet; the herbs hanging from a beam near the hearth were as fresh as if he’d just cut them. He catalogued them in his mind, then looked to the sh
elf to see his jars of unguents and salves.

  “If Pyrs can’t kill the dragon,” Connor said between bites of roasted something that Saeth had found in her forays, “they will beat a retreat. And if that happens—”

  “We’ve lost,” Dish finished for him, running his fingers through his hair and holding his head. “Can’t you kill the dragon?”

  Connor shook his head. “No more than you can. We have to focus on Tiernmas.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” Dish demanded.

  After wiping his mouth with the back of his dainty hand, Connor produced the labrys from under his cloak, struggling to free it from the bra/holster. He held it out, saying, “Kill Tiernmas.”

  A general whoop of joy was quickly hushed by Lyl who pointed out they could be found here. Connor had left his battalion of Sunless guards just outside the door, in case his runes weren’t good enough.

  “How will we get close enough to use it?” Lyl was asking. She had the labrys in her hands, running her fingers reverently over a blade that had begun to tarnish. She had been part of its making, Connor had learned, smelting Tiernmas’s crown with his blood. Lyl liked to think her magic was pure, a gift from her green gods. But she had used blood magic then. She knew the power it held, yet chose to deride it.

  “I brought you the labrys,” Connor said evenly. “It’s up to you to figure out how to get close to him. I…can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?” Lyl said. “You have to mark the rune, you said so yourself.”

  “Yes. You strike the blow, after I mark the rune. But first, I need to bring the others up from the labyrinth.”

  “What others?” Dish asked. His eyes flashed repeatedly to two of Connor’s guards who remained inside the door.

  “Well, me for starters,” Connor pointed to Celeste’s body. “I’ve overstepped my bounds with Celeste. It’s time to set her free. And there are those guarding my real body in the labyrinth. Fiach, Iris, Dylan and Elowen.”

  Lyleth released a breath as if she’d been holding it for a long time. Then she smiled, saying, “They live.”

  Connor nodded, and returned her smile. “What about Merryn? Have you found her?”

  Chapter 26

  As he walked, Tiernmas turned the steel cylinder over and over in his hand. How did this weapon work? It had exploded when he’d placed it against Merryn’s head, but when he’d tried it again, it simply went click. He stuffed the thing back into his belt, hopeful that its magic might return, or that he might find some other use for it.

  He picked his way along the wall of the inner ward, greeting his archers. They responded with abbreviated bows while showing their palms, the sign of respect among the Ildana.

  Tiernmas had sent his Sunless to the field beyond the battered walls, and if the reports were correct, the invaders were taking their heads. The commander of the northerners, the lord of Arvon, staged a well-executed siege. His troops were divided into three fronts—as one battalion launched an attack at the walls and the dragon, the other two provided cover. They battered the walls with projectiles and kept the dragon just out of striking distance with ballistas and archers.

  Tiernmas must make his threat before the northern chieftains pressed the small breach they had gained on the northern side. He had sent for the crippled king and his solás. Nesta would bring them to the gate.

  A barrage of arrows chittered off the walls around him. One or two found his flesh. He simply pulled them out, and felt his greenflow fill the wound with life.

  When he reached the barbican, he found no guards. The beam from the great sunstone cascaded from the spire and lit up the platform of the barbican. As Tiernmas stepped into the amber light, it left glitter in his mind, a sizzling energy in his limbs and a clarity of vision. He gazed upon the broad battlefield and the thousands of northern Ildana, their heads in shrouds as if they awaited the gallows. He knew their chieftain by sight, even though he was well beyond bowshot.

  “Pyrs,” Tiernmas said aloud, casting the name upon the river of focused light that flowed around him. It reached out to the field below. As he spoke his name, the man he’d chosen as the chieftain turned a hooded head toward the wall. It was as if Tiernmas had whispered in his ear.

  The intelligence and bravado of this northern lord made Tiernmas yearn to meet the man. But Tiernmas would be too vulnerable on the field, his commanders had told him. He must watch from the walls like a woman as the multitude of northerners were repulsed again and again, as the dragon cut through their lines with fire.

  “Your king is my prisoner,” Tiernmas said to the distant lord of Arvon. Then he slid the steel weapon from his belt, pointed it at the distant figure of the chieftain. He pulled the lever beneath his finger.

  Click. Click, click, click.

  Nesta appeared at his side, her mismatched eyes hooded beneath a worried scowl. “My lord king,” she said, averting her gaze so she did not have to meet his eyes. “The prisoners have escaped.”

  He pointed the metal thing at her face and pulled the lever. Click.

  She recoiled as if it had fired, and fell back against the wall.

  He had her by the throat. “You let them go.”

  “No,” she croaked. “No, there…were…others.”

  “What others?” He struck her hard, and pushed her to the floor.

  She coughed, and pink spittle came from the corner of her mouth. It made him miss Merryn even more. Nothing could purge the weakness of the Ildana from Nesta’s blood.

  She had taken Merryn’s place as his solás with an eagerness that bordered on hysteria.

  “What others?” he demanded again.

  “I don’t know,” she cried, her palms extended, and quaking. The necklace of talons looked ridiculous on one so easily cowed. “Two of them killed four guards,” she pleaded. “Then they were gone.”

  She didn’t have to say any more. He knew she had run, and left the prisoners to the assailants.

  “Gone, no,” he said. “They’re not gone. They’re in the labyrinth. Unless you think they know their—”

  “My lord?”

  A boulder caught the edge of the barbican and stone shards exploded.

  “My lord?” she asked again, stupidly.

  Was it Caradoc who had attacked them?

  A throb of excitement pounded with his pulse at his temples. He felt his crown of hellebore blossoms swell and burst open, mirroring his heart.

  Tiernmas declared, “Caradoc is inside Caer Sidi.” He had to be. Tiernmas had felt those eyes upon him, had sniffed the perfume of his magic, not only in the dragon, but here. Inside these walls. It was not just the remnant of his ancient spells that ran like a gilded ribbon through the halls, no, this magic was fresh, alive.

  Tiernmas would find him. For maker and made are one.

  Chapter 27

  The ghostly sound of a carnyx penetrated the dense walls of the fortress. The wail of the war horn and the concussive rumble of stones striking walls gave Dish hope that Pyrs stood a chance at taking Caer Sidi.

  Celeste’s catatonic body sat beside Dish on a cushioned bench. Connor was tethered to her, just as Ava had been tethered to that red crow years before. Dish checked on Celeste’s breathing every now and then.

  Before Connor had vacated Celeste, he’d wanted a full accounting of what had happened to them, but mostly, to Merryn. Lyleth explained their capture, and Merryn’s death. She told him about the dungeon in the labyrinth, the appearance of food, and the torches that lit themselves, and their rescue at the hands of Saeth and Ragnhast who were led to them by Merryn’s sprite.

  Saeth explained to him how she and Judoc had found their way into the spire from the back of the dragon. In the battle that followed, Judoc was killed.

  Unlike the Sunless, Saeth and her kind were mortal—just longer-lived than her human counterparts.

  It wasn’t until Merryn’s sprite alighted on Connor’s cheek that he looked back at Dish with eyes filled with tears. At last, Dish und
erstood the depth of the bond between Connor and Merryn, the pact between two who had betrayed a mad king to save the land. And they must do so again.

  Connor had wiped at tears, smearing Celeste’s face with grime and snot. “I’ll return with the others,” he’d promised.

  Then Connor was gone, and the only indication that Celeste lived was a barely detectible shallow breath. Dish had begun to feel sorry for her himself, this woman who had kidnapped him, bled him, and left him to die. Now she smelled of mud, traces of the perfume which he recognized from his captivity, wet leather from her pilfered archer’s tunic, and a distinct hint of algae. Her platinum hair was no longer pulled into a business-like bun, but had escaped into dirty strands.

  Lyl was rambling about possible strategies to get to Tiernmas, pacing incessantly back and forth, from the balcony to the main room. “They should have been here by now.”

  “Where be they?” Ragnhast asked. He stood guard by the main door with Saeth, whose face was as impassive as ever.

  Lyleth disappeared into the bedchamber to lean upon a balcony rail and assess the progress of the battle.

  “You’d best stay away from the balcony,” Dish warned her as she paced back into the main room. “You could be seen.”

  She nodded, staring at the sleeping Celeste.

  Then she locked her arms around the woman and removed the unconscious body from the bench. She propped Celeste against a tapestry-covered wall beside a shelf to keep her from falling over. Moving to the large table that dominated the room, Lyl picked up the labrys as if it were a holy relic. Dish supposed it was something close to that.

  “Lylet forged such?” Ragnhast asked her.

  She turned a self-satisfied smile to him as she replied, “Not just me. But Black Brac.” She turned to Dish.

  “It was forged with blood magic,” Dish stated. “Something the Ildana forbade.”