Alwen and Cerrigwen exchanged a begrudging glare. They held each other at bay in a silent battle of wills that threatened to go on forever or end very badly. It was an uncomfortable standoff for everyone.
Finally, Bledig intervened. “Cerrigwen should stay, in case Odwain needs her. You’ve said it yourself. She is a gifted healer, and I want my daughter well cared for. We won’t be gone long.”
Alwen stiffened. “As you wish.”
“We had better go now, then, while we’ve the light and dry ground.” Rhys was impatient, ready to ride. “It’s going to rain.”
Rhys left to find Fergus and gather the horses, clearly relieved to have a task to attend to. Alwen stepped forward to stroke her cheek. Her fingertips were cool, soothing. For a moment, Eirlys was overcome by the gentle touch. She wanted her mother to stay. It was a childish wish, but there were some comforts one never outgrew.
“Everything you’ll require is in my rooms, or within Glain’s means,” she instructed Odwain. “Put her to bed and keep a close watch for fever.”
“I’m fine, Mother,” Eirlys insisted as she sank to sit on the steps. “Just tired, that’s all.”
Alwen smiled, although she didn’t look at all convinced. “I’m sure. But it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.”
“All right then,” Bledig chided. “Enough fussing.” He winked at Eirlys and took Alwen’s arm. “Leave the girl be and let’s go.”
Nineteen
The deeper they pushed into the forest, the greater her dread. Alwen felt the thickening of the air. It seemed to close in as if it meant to swallow them up. And though there were still hours of daylight left, the dense gray clouds that had darkened the sky mimicked the eerie gloom of dusk.
“It’s a good thing we brought torches,” Rhys said. “Do you know where you’re going?”
Alwen had taken the lead from the minute they’d left the temple commons. Rhys rode close behind with Bledig and Fergus. “Yes.”
“The woods are changed,” Rhys said. “I can’t see it, but I feel it.”
“Mind the trail,” Fergus warned. “I swear it comes and goes as it pleases.”
Alwen pulled to a halt, listening to the stillness. A distant rustle reached her ears. Something was moving through the brush. Bledig nudged his mount ahead a few paces and stopped again, cocking his head to the breeze.
“Alwen,” he whispered. She turned in her saddle to look, and Bledig tipped his torch toward the bracken to his right. “Through there.”
“Whoa, now!” Rhys cried out as his horse reared without warning and spilt him hard on the ground. He scrambled to his knees to grab the reins before the animal bolted, and then froze “The ground is moving.”
“It’s not the ground,” Fergus warned, as his mount skittered and cried. He struggled to control the horse and keep hold of his torch. “It’s the vines, Rhys. Watch yourself, all of you. There are creepers all around us!”
“Bloody hell!” Rhys jumped to his feet and made quick for his mount.
“Hush!” Alwen whispered, gesturing with her eyes toward the thicket around them. “We are watched.”
“Aye,” Fergus answered in a low voice. “That would be the devilkin lurking about, now, wouldn’t it? I’d venture to say they’ve been right there with us, all along.”
“What do they want?” Rhys reined the horse full circle, uncertain where to turn his back. “What are they waiting for?”
“Waiting for their chance, that’s what.” Fergus gave a wry chuckle. “The hands and eyes of evil, some call ’em.”
“Pay them no heed.” Alwen took a moment to get her bearings. “If they had any real power they’d have shown it by now.”
Agreeing with Bledig’s instincts, Alwen spurred her horse off the trail and into the trees. The thicket was soon so tangled they had to kick and hack at the brush from horseback to break through. They trudged through the blackness for long, silent minutes until they finally reached what at first seemed to be a new copse. Instead, Alwen found herself before an enormous wall of thorns.
Razor-sharp toothlike spindles protruded from tar-colored vines that grew as thick as tree limbs. The growth was too dense for any light at all to penetrate, and Alwen was stunned at the sheer height and breadth of it — she could not tell where the forest ended and the hedge began. It was as if the vines had overtaken the trees, weaving them into the grotesque tapestry.
Rhys followed Fergus and his father into the clearing and dismounted, gaping at the tangled mesh of twining twig and thorn. “Wicked, this is,” he breathed.
“It writhes like a vipers nest,” Bledig said quietly, still astride.
“It looks far more deadly than that to me,” Rhys said. “The whole mess moves under its own might. It’s almost as if it means to grow right over us.”
“Yes,” Bledig answered simply. “I think that is exactly what it means to do.”
Fergus pulled up alongside Alwen. “What now?”
Without warning, the skies erupted in a thunderous explosion. Hail burst from the sky. What little daylight remained was completely eclipsed, and the pelting ice snuffed the torches. Instantly it was dark as the dead of night.
“Of all the hell-fired hog swill.” Fergus jumped from his mount and stood next to Rhys. “I’ve seen plenty of magic in my days but never the likes of this. That’s black magic, all right. The blackest there is. Sure as I’m standing here.”
“Quiet.” Alwen slid from her saddle and stepped toward the towering hedge. “We’re all well enough aware of what confronts us. Give me peace long enough to think of some way to dispel it.”
Alwen marveled even as she trembled beneath the threatening mass, wondering what evil she faced. She was mesmerized by the wicked genius that had conceived it, fully aware that the awe she felt was a dangerous lure. The mysterious was the most devious of all terrors. Its true horrors were concealed behind a beguiling veil that confused the senses and clouded the instincts. The temptation to stand and stare was strong, despite the certain and deadly peril. In all her days, Alwen had never been called upon to face such a thing. And though she would not let it show, she was afraid.
It had a spirit essence, this thing, as if it had breath in its bulk and feeling in the dark prickly flesh that covered its limbs. She recognized the smell of evil, a sickly sweetness in the black sap that oozed through gnarled veins to feed the spell. And its eyes were on her. Her skin burned in the fierce gaze of the sinister sentinels lurking just beyond the limits of her vision. The devilkin skulked closer, sensing that their time was short.
Alwen retreated a step and felt the steamy breath of Bledig’s horse against her rain-dampened back. “They will strike soon,” she warned. “They will try to stop us.”
“They already have,” Rhys muttered from the shadows. “Tried to stop us, I mean.”
“Hush now,” Fergus hissed. “Let her work.”
As if I know what to do, Alwen thought. She felt small and meek in the shadow of this spell. Would that she could work some ready-made magic against it, but Alwen could not even manage to call a salient thought to her head, let alone send words of power spewing from her lips.
She wondered dimly about Cerrigwen. Not that Alwen wanted or needed her help. No, she had wanted Cerrigwen present to keep her close and well watched — and away from her child. Almost certainly, she had some hand in this grotesque creation, though the only proof Alwen had was Cerrigwen’s obvious resentment of her. She had already considered that this was some sort of perverse challenge, another not-so-subtle defiance of her authority. At best, what confronted her here was a manifestation of Cerrigwen’s arrogance and conceit. At worst, it was a blatant attack — an attempt to remove whatever threat Alwen posed to her ambitions, by any means necessary.
But there was but another more hideous possibility, one that Alwen was horrified even to entertain. This was high sorcery that Alwen suspected even Cerrigwen could not have wrought on her own. She must have had help. And if that was so, there was fa
r greater danger ahead than the atrocity that confronted them now.
“Bloody hell!” Fergus sputtered. “Look out!”
Alwen recoiled but not in time to avoid the gnarled, clawlike twig that reached out from the dark to snare her wrist. Horror shivered through her bones and stilled her blood as the vine snaked up and around her arm toward her shoulder. She was all but petrified.
“Don’t try to pull your way free,” Rhys warned. “The harder you heave, the harder it may heave back.”
Alwen tested it with a little tug to be sure. The backlash was instant and cruel. She gasped as the vine cinched tighter, and her fingers tingled. Bledig slid from his horse and started toward her, prepared to cut her loose.
“No,” she cried. “Wait.”
“Wait for what?” he snapped. “For the bloody thing to swallow you whole?”
She didn’t spend her breath to answer, to proclaim this challenge hers to face. He would know. Though he would not stand the wait with ease, he would stand it — unless and until she bid him otherwise.
Alwen forced herself to confront the blackened briar and the brutal hatred that had made it. She would have to save herself. If only she knew how.
Almost as if it had heard her thoughts, the vine began to retract. Alwen felt herself being dragged toward the hedge ahead of her and dug her heels into the forest floor. It was too strong, and her resistance only seemed to make it stronger. Panic stripped her of what little breath she might have had to cry for help. She wracked her mind, prepared to grasp at the wildest thought. But none obliged.
Then instinct spoke to her, piercing the veil of terror that clouded her thoughts. Some quiet whisper from far away convinced her to be still, to let her arm go lax against the pull. A thing not so easy to do as it was to think. She was rigid with fear. With focus, though, her hand and wrist slackened and, quick as you please, slipped loose of the bind. She was free.
“Step away from it, Alwen,” Bledig insisted. “Quick. And watch for thorns.”
Bledig could be still, it seemed, but not silent. She swooped to catch the wretched thing as it skulked away and yanked off a piece to examine more closely. “These vines have no thorns.”
Fergus waved the torch overhead. “But that briar hedgerow does.”
“Yes.” Alwen looked up and swallowed hard, imagining herself impaled on the deadly bed of barbs. “It surely does.”
Bledig was grim faced. “Eirlys climbed right over the top of that spiny fence. It’s a blessing she survived it.”
Eirlys. Alwen recalled the sight of her daughter’s bloodied face. Her child had nearly met her death. Rage swelled, tapping strength she had never before called upon, summoning strength from the depths of her being. Whoever had unleashed this wickedness upon her loved ones would know what it meant to have her wrath. Let them all bear witness, then, to what real power was.
Alwen lifted her face to the mist and turned her eyes inward to visit the secret places within herself, searching for the mystical forces through which she commanded her realm. She felt the rain on her skin and knew it for what it really was. It was not simply the whim of nature. It was a blessing from the gods, and it belonged to her. Alwen reached toward the sky as her spirit roused to the wisdom of her inner voices.
Whispers echoed through her mind. From the primeval instinct that steeped her soul came the distant murmurs of the Ancients. She heard the cant of elders, past generations of the magical bloodline of which she was born, a sacred chorus sung in the tongue of the spirits.
Alwen repeated the foreign sounds as they were given to her. As she spoke, the words took shape to form a single thought, and Alwen quickly recognized its meaning. Water knew no more pristine a form than as it fell freely from the sky. No better cure for pestilence could there ever be than the purification of a purge.
With understanding came assurance, and soon the spell drew strength from her conviction. Upon the issuance of a thought, the mist transformed into a pelting, wind-driven rain. The cool tingle of the droplets that whipped against her face gave rise to a secret revel. Alwen felt full and fierce. She was powerful. She sensed her magic working within the water and opened her eyes to behold what she had wrought.
In answer to her beckon, the sudden cloudburst swelled into a fearsome storm. The sky exploded with a deafening bang, and water fell from the clouds in streams. And then, at Alwen’s silent urging, the deluge converged into a single whirling funnel of water bearing down upon the thorny hedge. The devilkin sent up a furious, deafening shriek as they first attempted to withstand the attack, and then fled deeper into the forest to avoid destruction. Unleashed, the vines lashed out like whiptails, even as the consecrated rains pummeled the spiny wall and drenched the soil in which it had rooted.
Alwen sensed the wickedness waning as the briar weakened and began to collapse beneath its own soggy weight. Grim satisfaction curled the corners of her mouth into a wry smile as she watched the twisted, blackened hedge begin to shrivel. The cursed trailing vine quickly dissolved with a foul-smelling vaporous hiss in the thunderous wake of one final lightning strike.
Alwen stood rooted to the ground while the rains abated, shaken by the magnitude of her handiwork. She had thwarted one of her own. No greater victory could ever be realized, except perhaps at the hands of a grand mage like Madoc.
Bittersweet and short-lived was the thrill, though, for in the very instant of owning the triumph, her exultation was drowned by waves of sorrow. She sagged beneath the burden of understanding what she had done. Never, at least not to her knowing, had any Steward turned her powers against another’s. This was no proud moment.
No consolation came from knowing that Cerrigwen had broken the covenant first. Alwen had triumphed over this betrayal, but there was no glory to be claimed, not in any name. What rivalry there was between them should have never come to this.
“It’s damned cold out here,” Bledig muttered behind her.
She was nearly numb to the elements, unaware of the chill until he wrapped his wolf-skin cape about her shoulders. The wet wool pressing against her skin under the weight of the fur sent a violent shudder through her. Bledig braced her with his grip but stopped short of drawing her to him. Alwen was surprised by his restraint, but still embittered and far too exhausted to encourage his affection or his warmth. The cape was comfort enough.
As her senses slowly surfaced and reawakened to the world and those around her, Alwen saw apprehension and expectation in their captive stares.
Fergus let out a low, whistling exhale. “How ever did you do that?”
Alwen considered an answer, but nothing she could say would explain what they had witnessed. It was a thing that defied description, and she hadn’t the will or the wherewithal to try. Besides, what words would she use to define who and what she had become? Instead, Alwen blankly accepted the reins as Bledig handed them to her and dragged herself astride the mare. More than anything, she wanted to go home.
“We’re finished here.” Alwen turned her horse toward the temple, vaguely aware of a faint burning in the skin above her breast, beneath the silver amulet she wore. “It is time to get out of the rain.”
Twenty
“We should get you inside.”
“Odwain, you are worse than my mother.” Eirlys sighed. “Just a minute more. I haven’t the strength to move.”
He shifted uneasily on his feet. “All the more reason to get you upstairs and into bed,” he insisted.
Before she could argue, a fiery flash parted the clouds. Hail fell from the sky so hard and so fast it ricocheted off the ground like stone pellets launched from an enormous astral catapult. They stung when they hit.
Over the deafening, drumming roar, a rolling rumble peaked in a thunderous crescendo that shook the earth. “Odwain!”
He snatched her hand and yanked her up the steps before she could blink. Odwain flung her into the vestibule and shut the heavy doors hard behind them. “Bloody hell!” he sputtered.
Eirlys gig
gled through a shudder. Water dripped from his nose. “You’re all wet.”
“So are you.” Odwain took her arms and pulled her against him. When she shuddered, he wrapped his arms about her and squeezed. “And cold. You’re shivering.”
Eirlys rested her forehead against his chin. “I suppose I’d best let you help me upstairs.”
“Well, my pet.” He scooped her up into his arms and began to carry her through the halls. “I don’t see that you have a choice.”
“This is silly,” she protested. “For goodness’ sake, Odwain.”
“Silly or not, you will suffer it,” he insisted, taking the first of three flights of stairs to her mother’s rooms in swift, determined strides. “If only for my sake.”
Eirlys gave in without further fuss. Odwain was quite firm and in truth, she didn’t really mind. Eirlys found his gallantry thrilling. Besides, it was an awfully long way and though she would never admit it aloud, she would not have made it even as far as the first step on her own.
Odwain left her on the divan while he tended the fire. Her mother’s attendant had followed them in with a bowl of fresh water and a plate of bread and cheese. She set the bowl and plate on the desk under the window and pulled several rolls of cloth and a small leather bag from a pocket at her waist. Eirlys recognized the Steward’s medicine pouch. The herbs or salve or whatever it held were consecrated, blessed against all sorts of evils and ills.
“Use this to treat your wounds,” said Glain. “It will ward off fever.”
“Or worse.” Eirlys tried to smile but couldn’t tell if she had succeeded or not.
“You really shouldn’t make light of this,” Glain chided. “Every precaution must be taken.”
Eirlys nodded. It was true enough. Even she knew what sort of afflictions could come from a curse. Glain laid the pouch and bandages on the table next to the bowl and quietly excused herself while Odwain finished at the hearth.
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