Forging the Runes

by Josepha Sherman

"Well?" the young lord insisted again. "You told me that you had the man. Where is he?"

  "We . . . did have him," Tegan began, very warily.

  Morfren, of course, fastened on the slight hesitation with the fierceness of a hound. "Did? What do you mean by did? Has he somehow managed to escape you?" He was, the three mages knew from long experience, warming himself up to a goodly rage. "Are all your vaunted powers nothing but so much mist? Have you been lying to me all this while?"

  "No, my lord," Tywi assured him hastily.

  "Of course not, my lord," Tegid added, quick on Tywi's heels.

  "It's just that—"

  "The distances involved—"

  "And he's moved so rapidly over—-"

  "—water—we can't track anyone over water, you know that, my lord and—"

  "I will not hear any excuses." It was said in so suddenly cold and hard a voice that all three mages looked up in alarm. "Cadwal ap Dyfri murdered my father. After even so long a time, there must be—there will be justice."

  "Uh . . . yes, my lord."

  "Of course, my lord."

  "We will find him for you, my lord."

  " 'Find' isn't enough! You are to bring him to me! Do you hear that? You will bring Cadwal ap Dyfri to me— or I shall see you burned as sorcerers!"

  He stalked fiercely away, leaving the three men drained and terrified in his wake.

  Morfren ap Dyfyr, Lord of Tirsyth, kept up his determined pace all the way to die women's quarters. Waving the servants brusquely away, he stood in the doorway, heart racing. The two of them, his wife and his mother, sat sedately over their needlework, the sunlight striking the multicolored piles of wool, sparking their colors to jewel-brightness. His mother, by contrast, was a stern, somber figure in her eternal dark robes. Lady Gwarwen's face was set into rigid lines, lean as the face of a warrior. Her needle stabbed into the cloth, Morfren thought, like a blade into enemy flesh. She made his Elin, pale of hair and face and gown, look even less substantial than ever.

  Morfren swallowed convulsively. "Mother."

  She glanced up. "Well? Don't hang back like a child, Morfren. Enter."

  Morfren took the seat she indicated, furious at himself. He was a man, curse it, the lord of his estate! Yet all his mother had to do was say do this, and he jumped to her bidding.

  You should have been a warrior, he told her. You should have lived in the ancient days and killed your foes and taken their heads.

  "Well?" his mother snapped again. "What is it? Have those useless creatures of yours actually managed a spell? Don't flinch, Elin!" she added. "You know very well what we're about."

  Elin nodded shyly, head down, and Lady Gwarwen gave an impatient little hiss and turned back to her son. "What you saw in her, besides good bloodlines—"

  "Mother . . ."

  "It's not as though she's actually given you an heir save for that one scrawny little—"

  "Mother!"

  "All right, then." Her eyes were hard as grey ice. "What have you done about justice? What have you done about avenging your father's death?"

  Morfren winced. Ten years of this, ten years of keeping the past alive and fresh in his mind. As though he needed reminding of his father, so tall and fierce and splendid—the very image of the perfect noble lord.

  As though he needed reminding of how totally he failed by comparison.

  "They . . . almost had him," Morfren said reluctantly. "But next time—"

  "Almost!" Gwarwen shrilled. "They're lying to you."

  "Och, Mother, what other choice is there? The assassins I sent into Eriu never came back—for all I know Cadwal thought they were nothing but petty bandits. I can't send warriors there! If King Aedh didn't destroy us, our own king would! There is no other way but this." He paused, unnerved by her silence. "They really did have him once, you know that."

  "What, in Eriu? He shook them off easily enough!"

  "It wasn't their fault. He crossed running water. You know how that throws off a spell."

  "I know the excuse those liars gave you."

  "But they found him again in the Saxon lands—"

  "And lost him again! You should have those frauds burned at the stake and be done with it!"

  "No. Not yet. Don't you see, Mother? Cadwal ap Dyfri is moving towards us, slowly but definitely—"

  But she'd already shut him out, turning back to her needlework as though he wasn't even in the room. Morfren opened his mouth, shut it, got to his feet in frustration, bowed, and turned away.

  "Bring him to me," his mother said without looking up. "Bring your father's murderer to me. Avenge my husband's death. That is all I ask."

  Fighting back the urge to shout, to say a hundred things he'd definitely regret, Morfren choked out, "It will he done."

  But just as he was leaving the women's quarters, he heard his mother's parting thrust: "Prove to me that after all these years you aren't a failure."

  Before he could even hope to retort, the door was shut gently and firmly in his face.

  Blessedly alone in the secrecy of their cramped little closet of a room after the debacle at the scrying pool, Tywi, Tegan and Tegin sagged wearily in their chairs.

  "Be nice if we really were sorcerers," Tywi said, and the others snorted.

  "While we're at it," Tegid drawled, "it would be nice if we could fly to the stars."

  What they were, at least what they tried to be, wasn't sorcerers but derwyddon, druids; cousins, all three were descended from members of that late, honorable rank. But so much had been lost over the years, so much destroyed by Rome in more than one way, that they could only guess at the proper rituals.

  Those rituals, that was, that could actually be safely performed within a Christian holding. This was not a good time for pagans, particularly not pagans with even the smallest claim to magical gifts.

  "Small, indeed," Tegan muttered. "Better for us if we had no gifts at all."

  Tegid gave a harsh little bark of a laugh. "Or had kept our stupid mouths shut about them instead of being so damnably greedy."

  Tywi frowned at his cousins. "Lord Dyfyr was generous enough."

  "Oh, indeed. When he deigned to remember us. Or wasn't raging or raping." Tegid straightened. "Don't glare at me like that. We both know exactly what sort of a man he was. I never really could blame that Cadwal fellow for killing him, not after . . . what happened to that unfortunate woman Cadwal loved."

  "What's past," Tywi cut in, "is past. Lord Dyfyr has been dead for over ten years. Lord Morfren is our lord and master, has been all that time, and what he orders, we do."

  He got to his feet, glancing at the other two. "Come, my colleagues-in-disaster. We're not total frauds: We did find Cadwal not once but twice. We even managed to send dreams to him—"

  Tegan snorted. "And paid for those Sendings with headaches so vicious I thought my mind would break."

  "Yes, yes, but the point is that we did do it. And if we don't find him again and lure him here . . . well, we all know that our dear young lord won't hesitate to carry out his threat. And his sweet lady mother would probably help pile up the firewood. "So now, cousins, enough talk. To work! I don't know about you two, but I, for one, have no wish to burn."

  Lost and Found

  Chapter 20

  Ardagh glanced about at a peaceful forest night, seeing nothing more alarming than the occasional quick, nervous blue or green glint of small animals' eyes, hearing nothing more alarming than the hundred natural little chirps and rustlings that seemed normal to a forest in this Realm.

  "And so, my love," he continued to the distant Sorcha, "here we are. Wherever 'here' may be."

  "Och, Ardagh—"

  "Sorcha, my heart, I know this may not sound very helpful, but please don't worry."

  "Don't worry! You're lost in the middle of—of—I don't even know where, and you tell me not to—"

  "Sorcha. Sorcha, love—"

  "And don't 'Sorcha, love' me as though I were a child! What are you going to do? Ho
w are you going to survive?"

  "That last apparently isn't a true problem, at least not according to Cadwal. He's quite wise in the ways of living off the land. And the weather's been nicely cooperative as well, dry and pleasantly warm."

  "Fine, wonderful, I'm so glad you're enjoying the holiday—but how are you going to get back?"

  "I'm afraid that I can't get back, not yet. I gave my word to Aedh, remember, to find aid for Eriu, and so, find it I must."

  "But you surely can't return to Wessex!"

  "No?"

  "Ardagh!"

  "Listen to me. Listen. My honor has been stained, my name darkened. Once was bad enough; right now there's not much that I can do to avenge myself on my brother and his court. But I will not let myself be dishonored by—" he changed the sentence in midbreath from the slur he'd been about to issue against humans to a safer "—by these folk as well."

  "Honor," she said. "That is what worries men the most, isn't it? Keeping their oh-so-precious honor intact."

  "Oh? And women don't worry about honor at all?"

  Sorcha sighed. "Of course we do. It's just that—och, Ardagh. Just bring yourself back to me, that's all I ask. Just bring yourself back."

  She broke the contact, and Ardagh sat for a time in total stillness, thinking of her, thinking of them, wondering with a bittersweet longing and hopelessness that must surely be Cadwal's Cymric hiraeth, what could ever be between them.

  No. He didn't have the luxury of worrying about Perhaps and Maybe. First: Osmod. That the sorcerer would be frantically hunting him was obvious, nor was the man likely to give up without good cause; Osmod would be terrified By now that the prince would unmask him.

  I will. Eventually.

  He doubted that the men he and Cadwal had been forced to leave behind were in any real danger—nor were they a danger to him. It was unlikely that Egbert would risk complications from Eriu by harming them, and they certainly would have nothing harmful to say against Ardagh.

  Osmod, the prince thought again. All this trouble is your doing. Wait, Osmod. Worry and wait.

  His sudden smile had nothing at all of humor or humanity about it.

  As Osmod entered the council hall, he saw Egbert glance sharply up, a thin ray of morning light glinting dramatically off the kings golden hair. "Well?"

  The other Witan members were already there, Osmod noted, all of them watching him wide-eyed, perched on their benches like so many wary birds ready to take flight. He fought down the ridiculous urge to shout Run for your lives! at them just to see what would happen, and bowed low before the king.

  "Nothing, my liege," he told Egbert. "Just as before, nothing." Nothing indeed. For two days now the runes haven't given me the faintest clue as to where our wandering prince has gone. But of course he wasn't about to tell that frustrating, perilous fact to the king. "The prince's men," Osmod said instead, "have by now been questioned every way up to the edge of actual torture—which last we both agreed would not be wise to inflict on another king's subjects—"

  "Indeed."

  "—and all I've heard from them is that Prince Ardagh is," he imitated their barbaric Eriu accent as best he could, "a strange sort of fellow, not someone we can figure out all that easily but what do you expect from a prince, and a foreigner at that?" Osmod stopped to take a breath. "In short, my liege, they haven't said the slightest word that might be taken as suspicious."

  "Are they that skilled at lying?"

  "No . . . I think not. In fact, after two days of listening to their ramblings, I haven't a doubt that these are nothing more than innocent dupes. Left behind," Osmod added delicately, "as sacrifices."

  Egbert leaned back in his chair, watching him through half-lidded eyes. "For us to slay like the Saxon barbarians we are, eh? And in doing so, cause a ripple of trouble between Wessex and Eriu?"

  Osmod took a step forward in earnest, feigned, outrage. "Do you see just how clever our treacherous prince is? He wasted not the slightest chance to cause discord!"

  "Perhaps," Egbert murmured, "perhaps not. One part of this matter fails to make sense. There is no possible reason, either political or economic, for Aedh to have sent an assassin."

  "Oh, I wondered at that myself. But there's another way to look at this. Prince Ardagh probably was sent from Aedh of Eriu as an envoy."

  "In other words, he tricked Aedh as well?"

  "Is that really so impossible? You heard how smoothly Prince Ardagh spins a web of words, how convincingly he speaks. Just because he was playing the role of an envoy from Eriu doesn't mean that he couldn't have been in someone else's pay at the same time." Osmod shrugged. "He's a foreigner, after all—more than that, an exile. He can hardly be constrained by any civilized code of honor."

  Egbert raised a skeptical eyebrow. "In someone else's pay? Whose?"

  "Ah yes, that is the question, isn't it?" Osmod paused as though genuinely puzzled. "I wondered about that, as well. Who, we must ask ourselves, would stand the most to gain from your—God and his saints prevent it— death?"

  "An intriguing point," Egbert said dryly.

  Isn't it? Osmod agreed silently. And with any luck at all, one of these dolts will pick it up and play with it as I wish—ah, yes, here we go. I see several mouths opening.

  After an initial murmuring of confusion, one voice cried out, "Mercia," as Osmod knew someone certainly would. It was, after all, the most blatant choice. "King Cenwulf of Mercia."

  "No, no," someone else protested. "Too obvious!"

  Of course it is, you idiot. That's the very point! Obvious is just what I want. Now shut up!

  But he didn't need to say a word. The others were already shouting down the naysayer: who else could it have been, after all? No one else here in Britain had the might, neither Saxon nor those wild men of the Cymric kingdoms. Surely not Charlemagne, off in Rome being crowned Emperor! Charlemagne certainly had the might for open attack, should he wish it, and no need at all for subversive actions, but he had never expressed even the slightest interest of leaving the mainland to conquer the British kingdoms.

  There it was. Certainly no one else in Britain but Mercia was of sufficient might and strategic placement to make so daring a move!

  As the debate continued, Osmod kept his face carefully blank. But he was thinking, Mercia, yes, and letting himself picture Wessex victorious over so goodly a stretch of land, the two kingdoms combined into one twice as mighty. Yes, ah yes, what a lovely image!

  But was the time right? Was this too soon a move—

  Nonsense! There was no such thing as "too soon," and only cowards worried about the time being propitious. All he must do was keep tempers and patriotic feelings roused like this, and the Witan would grant whatever he—whatever Egbert wished.

  Glancing at the king, Osmod caught the same glint of cynical amusement and clear ambition in Egbert's eyes that he knew must be in his own. For a moment, king and ealdorman looked at each other in perfect accord.

  And this is all due to you, Prince Ardagh, however indirectly. Curse you wherever you've run, I still will need your death. But for the moment at least, you are so very much more useful to me alive!

  "Two days," Cadwal said blandly.

  Ardagh, tired and travel-worn, glared at him. "I was wrong. I admit it."

  "Don't worry." The mercenary, looking disgustingly healthy aside from the dust of travel, was clearly being magnanimous in victory. "Misjudging distance is a common mistake of . . . well . . ."

  "Of idiots new to the woodland. Yes, yes, I admit that point, too. But you must admit I haven't held you back."

  "No, indeed. Don't know how you do it, but I've never seen anyone go through underbrush so smoothly. Or scoop fish so easily out of streams with a bare hand. You move like a . . . well, like one of your people."

  "You never will get used to saying 'Sidhe,' will you?"

  "Probably not." Cadwal grinned. "You do seem to be getting used to the wilderness, though."

  "Probably not," Ardagh mimicked
. "At least by now I know something about what's safe to eat, thanks to you. 'No plants with that milky sap, unless you know 'em, no fruit that's got five segments, no older bracken, no mushrooms unless you really recognize them—' "

  Cadwal grunted. "Make me sound like a nagging father."

  "Hardly that. Just like a wise man. For a . . ."

  "Human. You never will get used to saying that, will you?"

  "Once again: Probably not. Cadwal, do you still have no idea where we are?"

  "I'm . . . not sure," the mercenary said so evasively that Ardagh glanced at him.

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning that the plants, the trees, everything around here is just so very familiar. But I haven't seen anything specific, any special landmark that can actually make me stop short and say, yes, this is where I am."

  "You . . . don't think we're in Cymru, do you?"

  "Och, I told you, I don't know. There hasn't been anything that couldn't be found on the other side of the border, either. And no, humans don't have any weird homing instincts to— What? What's wrong?"

  Ardagh had come sharply alert, listening with every Sidhe sense. Ignoring Cadwal, he took a wary step to one side, listening, listening. . . .

  "I am of the Sidhe," he called out tentatively in his native language. "I am of the Sidhe. What clan, what people are you?"

  Nothing.

  Very suspiciously nothing. Not the mere silence that meant the absence of any watcher, but the total suppression of sound, as though that watcher was trying very hard indeed not to be found. Ardagh's ears caught the softest, softest rustle of underbrush—

  "Gone," he said in disgust in the human tongue.

  "What? Iesu, man, what?"

  "For an instant I could have sworn that I felt the touch of . . . not Sidhe, no, but . . . kin. I could have sworn . . ." He straightened. "No. Whatever, whomever, might have been out there is definitely gone now. Ha, if I wasn't merely picking up some odd echo of my own Power reflected from the forest."

  "Is that possible?"

  "To quote you, I don't know. All I can tell you for certain is that I'm positive we're not in any immediate danger. Other than from the mundane world, that is."