The faerie kinship was a gift from her father’s mother, and Eirlys cherished it. It was because of her father’s ancestry that the invisible draping that separated one world and the next was parted for her, as it once had been for him. Eirlys could roam hither and thither on a whimsy or a wish and always go home again. And all on account of a bargain her father had struck.
Her father had petitioned for her human half — just as his father had done for him. All of the Wolf Kings — Bledig and his father and even his father before him — had such ferocious reputations that even the fey feared their wrath. Bledig had traded his own welcome in the faerie realm for her right to choose her own path. On pain of any manner of horrible tortures, her faerie cousins had honored the pact and never claimed her, though by right they could. She belonged to them as much as she belonged to anyone.
Thus, Eirlys had been granted the benevolence of both worlds, magical and mortal. Not that it amounted to much that she could see beyond the lively company of the magical people and the secrets they shared. She was privy to the vast pixie larder and trove of culinary tricks, and a welcome guest in their secret herb gardens. Eirlys hadn’t any formal magic, not like her mother, but she did have certain sensitivities. Sometimes she thought she could hear the winds change or feel the seasons turn. For certain, however, the grounds that surrounded her mother’s home had a soul that spoke to her.
“Come a-courtin’,” came the spriggan call. He presented himself, dapper in his elfin way, bedecked in a rich brown tunic and matching hose. This happy-go-lucky ragamuffin she’d seen before. He had a terribly lecherous smirk.
“Not today, little man,” she answered firmly. “Besides, I’m to be married.”
“Pish. So fair of face and ebon hair, and of the faerie faith ye be. ’Tis a pixie pairing ye should pine for, no mere mortal man for ye.”
Eirlys giggled. Randy little rascal, she thought. Flattery would hardly turn her head, but she might be tempted to walk the meadow and orchard behind the castle a bit. Though it wasn’t as balmy a day as she’d hoped for, it was pleasant in a fall-come-winter sort of way. It was warm enough to leave off her cloak in favor of woolen dress sleeves as long as she kept moving. The sun burned bright behind a shade of high, hazy clouds.
She decided to let the sprite lead her along the trail that skirted the castle boundaries. It led to a small orchard where the proper grounds would meet the forest, were it not for the tall stone wall that surrounded the keep and all the outbuildings. She had been warned to stay clear of the forest. The White Woods were bewitched, though she hadn’t needed to be told to know it. Eirlys had sensed the potent magic in the oak and rowan and witchen trees just beyond the wall almost the minute they’d arrived at Fane Gramarye. It intrigued her, in a perverse sort of way, and she had risked going too near once or twice before just to satisfy her curiosity. She had never dared to pass through any of the gates and actually enter the woods, not that she could loose the chains that held them closed. But the forest sorely tempted her. It actually seemed to call her name.
The overgrowth along the wall where she entered the orchard was unexpectedly thick, and Eirlys noticed breaks in the rockwork where the forest wilds had begun to encroach. Some decay would be natural over the years, but she had not seen these gaps on her previous trips down this trail.
More curious than that, though, was the aura of the place. It had changed. Eirlys noted a distinct lack of noise. The birds had stopped singing, she realized, and then grasped the real truth. The birds were gone. This, she knew, was altogether odd. Even in the dead of winter one would hear the raven’s caw or the hoot of an owl.
Perhaps some sort of rot or disease had infected the orchard, made it unfit. Curiosity turned to concern, and Eirlys decided to look closer. Her investigation took her down a less traveled path through the fruit trees, but Eirlys considered herself safe enough so long as she stayed on the castle side of the wall. She knew the grounds well, and she had her faerie friends for company.
The farther she wandered into the orchard, the uglier it became. It looked to her as if the trees were dying. She could, after all, hear and feel the withering. But what could be the cause?
A sudden, unfamiliar fall of shade and shadow gave her pause. Eirlys glanced around and realized that she had somehow lost herself. She did not recognize this small clearing. Her heart leapt and began to flutter in fright.
“How can that be?” she wondered aloud. Eirlys had traipsed every inch of the grounds, including the thickets. But this place didn’t look like the orchard she knew. It was dense and dark, like the forest. Eirlys shuddered.
She hadn’t crossed into the forest, though. At least she thought she hadn’t. She desperately hoped she hadn’t. It was said the trees of the White Woods moved about to create an ever-changing maze that always and forever led a wanderer back to where he began. Whatever the truth of that, Eirlys knew, if only by instinct, that she was standing somewhere that she had never been.
She turned to find the trail, but it was gone. No passage or even a cut through the brush. Eirlys couldn’t make sense of it. She had felt the packed earth beneath her feet at every step, yet here she was in the middle of a copse with no path in or out. She couldn’t say for certain — in fact, it was silly to think it — but it was almost as if the undergrowth had suddenly sprung up around her.
Eirlys felt her throat close in, and she fought to catch her breath. Not once had she ever been lost. A keen sense of place and space was as common a trait to her as was the nose on her face. What was she to do?
Just as she began to panic, Eirlys felt a tug at her skirt and nearly laughed aloud with relief. She was not alone. The fey would lead her back. “Thank goo—”
She froze. A subtle rustle caught her ear, and a scratching sound. And then a creaking. Or a groan.
Eirlys gasped and jumped back as the vines reached out to grab her. Her skin began to crawl. Unless she’d altogether lost her mind, the woods really were growing round her, right before her eyes.
The tugging at her hem was more insistent, but Eirlys shook free. Something was moving about in the brush, and she wanted to know what. Eirlys pushed aside a stand of spindly brush. She peered into the dusky shadows, wondering were it man or beast she had happened upon. Sudden recognition struck her. She sensed what they were before she actually saw them, but if it hadn’t been for her faerie blood, she’d never have seen them at all.
On the edge of the veil between mortal ways and magic, evil was hard at work. Dark, twisted goblin creatures called the devilkin were weaving a spell — a thicket of thistle as tall as a house and so dense she couldn’t see light through it.
Eirlys stifled the shriek rising in her throat and staggered backward, stumbling over tree roots and rocks in her fright. She turned and bolted blindly through the forest. At best guess, she was heading westward, back the way she had come.
Not more than a furlong farther, she ran headlong into the black briar she was frantic to escape. She turned again and fled south along the hedge, looking for a thinning or weak patch. The faster she ran the faster it seemed to grow, taller and thicker until she could hardly see the sun.
Sheer terror drove her to scale the thistle. Thorns tore at her skirts and shredded her hands as she hauled herself frantically up and over the top of the hedge. She hit the ground belly first, so hard it knocked the breath from her. Her hands burned and she hurt all over. Eirlys pushed herself to her knees, gasping and gagging for air until she finally caught enough wind to scream.
The shrill sound startled a flock of hedge hens to flight. They burst from the brush nearby and scared Eirlys nearly to tears. She flew to her feet, glanced frantically about to get her bearings, and set off at a dead run for the Fane.
She heard footfalls pounding behind her, and fear spurred her to take the last several yards across the open in bounds. Not far now to the road, and home. Her lungs burned but her terror carried her, all the way through the waist-high wild grass and over the mulch i
n the herb patch. Just a few more strides and —
The road rushed up before her eyes. A dull, jarring thud reverberated through her wrists to her elbows and shoulders. It rattled her teeth and settled to a ringing echo in her head. Her knees and palms tingled, numb and hot at the same time.
“Uh,” she groaned, stunned by the fall. Eirlys carefully pulled the toe of her left shoe free of the root knot that had caught it and staggered to her feet. Before she could manage to gather her wits and her balance, she heard the sounds of a frenzied pursuit gaining on her rapidly. Eirlys turned to look just as the chase overtook her.
Eighteen
“Blazes, Eirlys!” Rhys pulled his horse up short just ahead of her and slid from its back. “What are you doing? Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
He stopped in his tracks as he turned toward her, eyes widening as his gaze took in her face, and then the rest of her. Rhys reached for her wrists and lifted her hands to examine them. “What happened to you?”
“I fell. I think. Once. Or maybe twice.” She wasn’t entirely sure, but she was surprised to hear the calm, even tone in her voice. Certainly she didn’t feel calm, not a bit. If anything, she felt horror-stricken. And sore to the bone. “What are you doing out here?”
“Why, I…” Rhys stuttered blankly. “You’ve been gone for hours, Eirlys. Odwain got worried when you didn’t come back by midday. And then I saw you making a mad dash from the woods and naturally thought there was something the matter. Foolish of me, I suppose.”
Ignoring his sarcasm, Eirlys brushed past him and started toward the garden. “I must speak to Mother, Rhys. Right away.”
“She’ll be in the spell rooms, I suppose, with the acolytes.” He walked his horse alongside, peering carefully at her. “But I think you may need some tending. You look as though you’ve taken a hellcat by the tail. What happened?” he insisted.
“My hands hurt,” she mumbled.
“Of course they do. The skin is split to bits!”
“Oh,” she said. She glanced at her palms and was surprised, though that was silly. She remembered now. “I had to climb the thorns to get out.”
“Get out of what?” Rhys was agitated. He took her arm and stopped. “Tell me what happened. This instant.”
“There is devilkin in the woods, Rhys. I saw them. Just now. Building a briar patch or a thistle hedge or something. It’s unnatural.” She felt uncomfortably warm. And dizzy, too. “It grows by feet and yards, right before your very eyes.”
“You need to sit down.” Rhys offered his arm for her to lean on. “Soon, I think.”
Eirlys agreed. “After I find Mother.”
“All right then. We’ll have her take a good look at you, too. Your color is wrong, Eirlys.” He squinted at her face. “You don’t look at all well.”
“I’ll be fine, Rhys. Really.”
Eirlys smiled bravely for her brother, but she was more than a little grateful for his strong shoulder. She was still winded and her legs felt wobbly.
By the time they’d made it halfway across the grounds, Odwain was already on his way to greet them. As he drew near enough to see her clearly, the look of relief fell from his face.
Eirlys smiled at his worried eyes and grim expression. “It’s not so bad as it looks, Odwain, I don’t think, but then, I don’t know how bad it looks. Is it awful? You look so solemn. I must be a frightful sight.”
Odwain mustered part of a smile as he reached for her hands. “You’re mussed up some, I guess, but still every bit the beauty.”
He pulled her closer, and Eirlys nearly fell into his arms. “What’s happened to you, pet?”
“Someone’s set the goblins to work in the woods,” she explained. My mother will know what to do.”
Eirlys noticed the not-so-subtle exchange of worried glances between her brother and her beloved and began to worry a bit for herself. If the scratches on her face were only half as unsightly as the wounds to her hands, she could well imagine the horrible disfigurement.
Rhys tipped his head toward the temple. “Inside, I think. That’s where we were headed.”
With Odwain on one arm and Rhys on the other, she felt strong enough to make it the rest of the way through the garden. By the time they reached the gate that led into the cobbled courtyard, though, she was truly spent.
Eirlys glanced across the courtyard. Bledig had seen the commotion and was well on his way, with Cerrigwen at his side. Eirlys remembered Cerrigwen’s fawning over her father at the feast and bristled a bit, wondering. What reason could Cerrigwen possibly have to be in Bledig’s company?
“You should wait here,” Rhys insisted. “Sit on the steps, maybe. I’ll go see if I can find Mother.”
Just then, Odwain let loose of her and stepped aside. Which was wise. Over his shoulder, she saw her mother burst through the temple door and swoop down the stairs.
“Eirlys!” Alwen exclaimed. “I had a feeling you needed me. And just look at you.”
Eirlys had rarely seen her mother so flustered. She almost thought the whole scene comical, but it wasn’t, not really. Everyone was worrying over her, only it wasn’t her they should be troubled about. “Mother, wait. I have something to tell you.”
Alwen cupped her daughter’s chin in her palm and tilted Eirlys’s head to examine her face, while the others all hovered around. Her mother gently smoothed the wild curls from her eyes. “How did you get these scratches?”
“Take a look at her hands,” Rhys suggested.
Alwen’s eyebrows arched in alarm as Eirlys offered her scathed and scraped palms. “Some of these cuts are very deep, Eirlys. We’ll need to tend to them right away.” “I’m all right.” Eirlys tried to pry her hands loose from her mother’s fretful grasp. “Really, I am. Don’t worry so.”
“I’ll judge that for myself,” Alwen said tersely. “You’re a mess and your dress is torn. Come inside. We’ll clean you up and then we’ll see.”
Eirlys huffed in frustration. “Will you just listen?”
“Let the girl speak, Alwen.” Bledig had arrived, with Cerrigwen close on his heels. “If she says she’s fine, she’s fine. Looks like a few cuts and a bruise or two to me. Nothing to make such a fuss over.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed angrily, and Bledig stared back for several long moments. Alwen’s disapproval was obvious, though Eirlys wondered whether her mother was more perturbed by his opinion, or by his very public contradiction. Or perhaps, Cerrigwen’s close proximity.
“Very well, then.” Alwen released Eirlys and crossed her arms over her chest, looking insulted and intrigued all at the same time. “I am listening. What is it, Eirlys?”
“Devilkin.” Now that she was allowed to speak and be heard, she could barely sputter. “Dozens of them. In the woods.”
“What the devil is a devilkin?” Bledig asked.
“The servants of evil.” Alwen’s tone was cold. Her violet eyes darkened, but her expression never changed. “Spawned to craft the magic of a black curse.”
“They were spinning thorny vines and weaving a wall of them. I swear it was growing taller by the minute and spreading faster than I could outrun it.” Eirlys looked down at her hands. The redness was worse now. “Finally I had to climb it to escape it.”
“What sort of spell might this be?” Odwain wondered.
“Some foul deed, no doubt,” said Rhys. He’d begun to pace, obviously anxious to be about the business of rectifying the situation rather than standing around talking about it. He was quick to action, especially when there was trouble. Her brother was brave, but sometimes too brazen.
Alwen nodded as her brow creased in troubled thought. She turned her stern gaze on Cerrigwen. “You have dominion over the natural realm. What do you say?”
“I would need to see it to know for certain,” Cerrigwen offered. “But a thicket of thorns is a common spell of defense. It is meant to keep invaders out.”
“Or,” Bledig said gravely, “to keep us in.”
“Well, whatever the bloody hell it is I say we hack it down,” Rhys demanded. “And damn quick, before it overtakes us.”
“The sooner the better,” Cerrigwen advised. “A spell isn’t set until it is finished.”
“That may be, Cerrigwen, but we do not yet know what we are up against,” Alwen countered. “One cannot battle black magic blindly.”
“If it is black magic.” Cerrigwen was very calm.
“Then let’s take a look at it,” Rhys challenged. “Eirlys can show us where to go.”
Eirlys felt sick. She didn’t want to go, but she would if she had to. All she wanted to do just now was sit down.
“No. She will not.” Eirlys felt Odwain beside her and leaned into him as his arm cinched tightly about her waist. “I won’t allow it.”
Everyone fell silent and turned to look at Odwain. The authority and finality in his tone had taken them all by surprise. Even Eirlys.
A faint smile played about her father’s lips, but his voice was stern. “Strong words, boy.”
“She’s already fought it off once and survived.” Odwain was defiant and very determined. “I am not sending her back out there.”
“Odwain and I can scout it out on horseback, see where it is and how far it’s grown,” Rhys offered. “Then we’ll have at least some idea of what’s out there.”
“We’ll all go,” Bledig decided. “Find Fergus and we’ll all ride out to see this devil’s hedge or goblin vine or whatever it is. Let’s deal with it now and be done.” He looked hard at Odwain. “Volchok here will keep an eye on Eirlys.”
“I should stay and tend to her wounds.” Cerrigwen stepped forward slightly. “And someone should give Madoc the news.”
Her mother glanced so sharply at Cerrigwen that it gave Eirlys a twinge. She could see suspicion, maybe even accusation in her mother’s eyes. “I’d rather you were with us, Cerrigwen. We may need your skills. There are any number of attendants for Odwain to call upon.” Alwen beckoned at the girl waiting and watching from the doorway. “And we can send Glain to Madoc.”
The Well of Tears Page 14