Seventh Child

by Peter R. Ellis

  “What was that?” September shouted to Cynddylig.

  “Ah, one of the great vessels of the river,” he called back, “It carries trade goods from Dwytrefrhaedr to the coast and back again. I think that was the Gleisiad.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It is a fish that swims up river from the ocean to the higher reaches. Red of flesh.”

  “A salmon?”

  Cynddylig shrugged and concentrated on getting them back on course. Tudfwlch settled back down beneath his sheeting and September pulled her cloak tight.

  Shortly the rain eased and the clouds lifted and parted. The Sun shone and their moods lifted. September turned to speak to Cynddylig.

  “I didn’t see any sails on that boat. What pushes it through the water?”

  “The same as this vessel.”

  “What, a gold nugget and an iron motor?”

  “The very same although somewhat bigger than the engine we have. It’s the Sun that gives Gleisiad her power.”

  “Are there many boats like the Gleisiad?”

  “Not as many as there once were, not that there were ever many of her size. I suppose there are still two or three doing the coast run.”

  “That’s not many boats for a country this big.”

  “There are more, smaller, vessels like this.”

  September looked around her.

  “This hardly carries much for trading and the Gleisiad, although she looked frighteningly huge when she was about to run us down, wasn’t a ship. But why are there fewer boats like that one?”

  “There’s less trade these days. People are scared by talk of the Malevolence attacking vessels and turning people to theft and murder.”

  “People are less prepared to entrust their wares to travelling tradesmen,” Tudfwlch added.

  “What about the crew of the Gleisiad?”

  “What about them, lass?”

  “Were they as surprised to see us as we were to see them? They were waving but they didn’t seem happy.”

  “It was raining and they had nearly run us down,” Tudfwlch said.

  “Aye lad, but the girl’s right, there was something else in their signals. A warning perhaps.”

  They fell silent, pondering what they had seen, trying to elicit meaning in the gestures the crew had made to them. September was trying to imagine a fleet of the sun-powered vessels sliding effortlessly up and down the river and what it would be like when one called at the villages along the banks.

  At last they stopped to make camp and they performed their now accustomed tasks. Cynddylig looked into the sack of root vegetables.

  “It will be good if we can re-stock some of our supplies tomorrow,” he said.

  “Oh, how are we going to do that?” September asked.

  “We should reach another village, Glanyrafon, tomorrow. I know a few people there. I am sure they will help us. But you will have to be discreet. I don’t want other people to know who you are.”

  “That’s a bit difficult when I’m wearing this cloak all the time. As you said, it marks me out as someone special.”

  “Yes, well keep out of the way when we land and we’ll think of something. I don’t really want to stop and meet people, just in case we attract too much interest, but the Glanyrafon people are good folk. There won’t be any stops after there.”

  After they had eaten, September spoke to the Mordeyrn through the horn. There was more to talk about this evening. She told him about their near disaster with the Gleisiad.

  “Those vessels move at speed. We passed her only a few days ago.”

  “It’s a shame I couldn’t travel on a big, fast boat. I would have caught you up more quickly.”

  “I understand September, but unfortunately there are few vessels of the Gleisiad’s class in Gwlad these days and none were available to help you.”

  September went on to tell him about Cynddylig’s plan to stop off at the next village.

  “Ah, tell him to take great care but I am sure it will be safe. We didn’t stop at Glanyrafon but it is your last chance to pick up provisions for some time.”

  As September settled down she wondered how far they had travelled in the four days since they had left Amaethaderyn. Three days of travelling from dawn to dusk. Cynddylig was rather vague about distances and September couldn’t gauge how fast their little boat moved, but it was considerably faster than walking pace. Two or three hundred kilometres perhaps. September knew there were many hundreds of kilometres still ahead of them.

  15

  She waited in the dark while the souls around her poured into the universe to perform their tasks of hate. Many were deflected by the planets moving in their orbits and flung back into the dark above the stars, but others reached their goal to bring disease and dissension or to stir the elemental forces to fight and destroy. Malice watched and waited. A path was opening up to the green-blue world at the centre of the sphere of stars that would allow her and the evil around her unimpeded access. She could be patient despite the anger and hate gnawing at her. Her time would come when she would control the actions of the Malevolence, direct them to the targets she chose and bring this world of tender goodness to its knees.

  Malice had wondered what had brought her to this place. Her soul had not been created here, and she had no bond with the unthinking wraiths that vented their hate on the world within the stars, but now she understood. She had been drawn here by another to whom she was bound and who had an existence in both universes. This other was a wielder of power, power that she wanted for herself. Who or what the other was she had yet to discover but when her time came to enter the universe and wreak her vengeance, then she would know and all would learn to fear her.

  Meanwhile, Malice waited and watched and learned and seethed with hate.

  16

  The next morning was bright, birds were singing in the trees, and although he wouldn’t say when he expected them to reach the village, Cynddylig seemed eager. Perhaps it was another ladyfriend he expected to find, September wondered. Tudfwlch too seemed keen to visit a new place. The river was still much the same, a wide, green expanse of flowing water with tall trees along the banks. It was mid-afternoon when September noticed the same changes as she had noticed when they had approached Abercyflym. The trees on the south, left-hand bank thinned out and there were signs of agriculture, but much as she searched the clearings she could see no sign of people working on the land. The trees on the bank gave way to wooden buildings clustered around a short pier. Cynddylig steered towards the village and Tudfwlch stood in the bow grasping the rope. There was no one by the waterside and no call went out to show they had been seen.

  “Is everyone in the fields?” September asked. Cynddylig didn’t answer but slowed the boat down to bring her alongside the wooden jetty. Tudfwlch jumped off and tied the rope around a bollard, then reached out to help September out of the boat.

  “I don’t like this silence,” Cynddylig said, pulling the tiller off the motor and stepping ashore with it in his hands.

  “Neither do I,” Tudfwlch agreed, reaching into the bow of the boat and lifting out his sword in its scabbard. He tucked it into the belt around his tunic.

  “Shouldn’t someone have noticed us by now?” September asked.

  “Yes,” Cynddylig said, “That’s what worries me. Stay close.”

  They walked along the jetty to the bank. There was a row of a dozen small houses along the bank but a dusty street went inland from the end of the jetty. It too was lined with wooden shacks, with wooden doors and shuttered windows. They approached the corner house. Cynddylig went up to the door and rapped on it with the handle of the tiller. The sound echoed eerily. September realised that there was no noise at all. There were no birds in the sky or sitting on the roof-tops or pecking at the grit in the street. Just silence.

  Cynddylig pushed on the door and it swung open. September looked into a living room with a table and stools. One of the stools was tipped over. There were plat
es and bowls and a jug on the table. Cynddylig stepped back into the street.

  “Let’s try somewhere else,” he said.

  They walked three abreast up the street, away from the river. Tudfwlch went and banged on the door of the next building. Again the sound disturbed the unnatural peace but there was no response. He opened the door and a similar sight confronted them; a table set for a meal but stools overturned and no sign of any occupants. The same was the case at the house opposite and the next and the next. In some there were signs of the owners’ occupation, a loom, a carpenter’s workbench, a cobbler’s last, but no workers. All had left their tools behind. They moved slowly up the mud-paved street growing more agitated as they found home after home deserted and signs of a hurried departure. September began to notice a smell, a foetid, noxious odour which grew stronger the further they moved along the road.

  They were approaching the last house in the street and then there was an open space with a low fence around it, a village green or meeting place. The smell had grown stronger and September covered her mouth and nose with her cloak.

  “I think I can see the villagers,” Cynddylig said, taking a few steps forward to the fence at the edge of the field.

  “Where?” September asked, looking to the trees and bushes beyond the field.

  “There.” Cynddylig pointed into the field. With their khaki and beige clothes and covered with a thin layer of sandy dust September’s eyes had not recognised the lumpy surface of the field for what it was – bodies, dozens of them. They stepped up to the fence but did not go further for fear of stepping on a body of a man, woman or child, each fallen where they had been struck down. September didn’t want to look but her eyes were drawn from one to the next, each showing a huge bloody wound. Some had limbs or head almost severed from their bodies, others great gashes in their torsos. September felt sick, was sick. She retched, spilling her breakfast and lunch over the dusty grass. Tudfwlch placed an arm across her shoulder while Cynddylig crouched down.

  “Who? How? Why?” September gasped between spitting the foul, acidic fluid from her mouth. She rubbed her hip. Her birthmark had started to itch.

  “What brought them out here, all together?” Tudfwlch asked, “They must all have rushed from their houses at once.”

  “Someone must have raised the alarm and they all ran here, to their meeting place, to find out what was happening” Cynddylig said, “and then they must have been surrounded and slaughtered. They were dead before they knew what was happening.”

  “Why?” September repeated.

  “There’s no reason. Just the Adwyth. I told you it turns one man against another.”

  “But murder, a massacre? It must have been a gang of terrorists.” September was still unable to fully grasp the horror that faced her. The itch had grown to an annoyance.

  “No, they wouldn’t have all left their homes and assembled here if they were being attacked by outsiders. People they knew lured them here.”

  A cry came from the trees to their right and a band of men and women came running towards them. They too were dressed in the typical clothes of the villagers.

  “Oh, there are still some alive,” September said.

  “But we won’t be if we don’t leave.” Tudfwlch shouted, “Run!”

  September looked again and saw that each and every one of the villagers, fast approaching them, carried a weapon – a sickle, a machete, a short sword, a hammer. Their cries were not ones of welcome but of attack.

  September turned to run with Tudfwlch and Cynddylig down the street towards the river. She took two steps and caught her feet in the low hem of the cloak. She tumbled to the ground. Tudfwlch turned back and grabbed her arm.

  “Come on, they’ll kill us without a thought,” Cynddylig shouted, pausing in his flight. September gathered up the cloak around her waist and ran with Tudfwlch. They were halfway down the street, with the jetty and their little boat in sight, when another group of villagers appeared around the corner and ran up the street towards them. They too brandished weapons. September and her companions shuddered to a halt.

  “We’re going to have to fight,” Tudfwlch said, drawing his sword.

  “Aye, lad, it looks like it,” Cynddylig placed a firm grip on the tiller.

  “Should we go into a house?” September gasped, her heart racing.

  “They’ll have us trapped, if we go inside,” Tudfwlch said. He dragged September into an alcove between two of the houses. Cynddylig and Tudfwlch stood side by side in the narrow gap facing onto the street.

  The two bands of villagers joined up and with an incoherent roar launched themselves towards their targets. Just one or two at a time could attack swinging their weapons wildly with those behind pushing forward. Cynddylig fended off their blows with the long tiller while Tudfwlch cut and thrust with his sword. Each strike drew blood. The first two attackers fell but they were dragged aside and two more stepped over them to renew the assault. September cowered behind her pair of protectors stunned by the ferociousness of the attack. The faces were contorted into caricatures of humanity. They wailed and growled and screamed as their weapons rose and fell. The clash of iron on iron and the screams as the attackers were pierced by Tudfwlch’s blade deafened and scared her. One after another was felled but their attackers just stamped over the fallen to take up the fight. Slowly, step by step Tudfwlch and Cynddylig were forced backwards. They were weakening, struggling to block the blows of the attackers.

  It was as if a calm had settled on her. She no longer heard the screams and shouts. The flailing arms were just a blur. September realised that Tudfwlch and Cynddylig were protecting her yet she had the means of their defence. With Tudfwlch’s broad shoulders pressing against her she struggled to reach inside her cloak. Her fingers found the locket and she drew it out. She undid the clasp revealing the starstone. She raised it up in her hand above the heads of her defenders. What could she say? She had no idea of spells or commands. There was just one thing she wanted.

  “Be gone!”

  Perhaps it was being in a narrow gap but the quality of her voice was changed, like singing in the bathroom. Instead of just a shout or scream, her voice resounded. Her words filled the air. A dome of blue light formed over the three of them and then expanded like the air bag in a car, inflating in an instant. Everything in its path – the buildings around them, the attackers – were blown away. There was a noise like a long roll of thunder directly overhead. September, Cynddylig and Tudfwlch fell to the ground in a heap of limbs.

  Dust slowly settled on them and there was quiet. The three of them struggled to their feet and looked around. Everything in a circle around them as far as the waterfront was flattened. The beams and planks used to construct the buildings were broken into splinters. Amongst the ruins were the scattered bodies of their attackers, dismembered and bloody.

  Cynddylig wiped a sleeve over his dusty face.

  “Well! I’m a Cemegwr! That’s some power you have there, lady,” he said, “I think you should put it away now.”

  September noticed that her right hand was still gripping the stone. She closed the case and slid it back inside the cloak.

  “I didn’t know...” she said, not sure what she was trying to say. She had no plan so had no idea what would happen when the power of the Maengolauseren was unleashed against people.

  “I am just thankful you did something,” Tudfwlch said, “I don’t think I had the energy to hold them all off.”

  “Let’s get away from here,” Cynddylig said, stepping gingerly across the debris and heading towards the jetty.

  The boat bobbed on the river as if nothing had happened, but when they were aboard and looked back they could see a huge circle of destruction.

  “What about all those bodies in the field?” September said.

  “Nothing we can do,” Cynddylig said, fitting the notched and scarred tiller back on the rudder, “We’ll have to leave them to the birds and the worms.” He reversed the boat away from th
e pier and turned upstream.

  In a few minutes the ruins of Glanyrafon were out of sight. Despite the afternoon heat September shivered. She wrapped her arms around herself and hunched herself down amongst the sacks.

  “What happened there?” she asked.

  “The work of the Adwyth,” Cynddylig replied.

  “But how?”

  “Some of the villagers, those that attacked us, fell under the evil influence and lured their fellows to their deaths.”

  “Why did they become evil?”

  Cynddylig shrugged. “There are many ways that the Malevolence can get into a person’s blood and turn them.”

  “Did you see the people you were expecting to meet?”

  “Gwilym and Dona, my brother and his wife? No, they were not among the attackers.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yes. I haven’t seen him or Dona for years. Won’t now. I expect they’re lying hacked to pieces in the meeting field. At least that’s better than dying as a slave of the Malevolence.”

  September realised that the attackers were dead because of her.

  “I killed all those people,” she said.

  “They would have killed us.”

  “Yes, but perhaps if I had known how to use the stone better I could have stopped them attacking us and got rid of the evil in them.”

  “No, lass. Once the evil is inside a person they change forever. Their mind is eaten away by the evil and they become an extension of the Adwyth. If anything, killing them saved them from themselves.”

  September wasn’t totally convinced. “But why is it that I don’t think to use the stone until I’m being attacked? You and Tudfwlch were fighting to protect me.”