by Dave Freer
He started walking uphill. Below, in the fiord, the water, having disgorged or sunk the fleet of Vanar, was settling back to its normal mirror-calm.
“We’ll do it by flying to the island with the Tolmen Way, boy. Let’s get a little distance from the shipwrecks first. I’m tired after that row, and wouldn’t mind a nice easy launch. We’ll need to get a fair bit of altitude, because shipwreck or no, some of these Vanar will shoot arrows at us. And your basket won’t stop those.”
Díleas seemed quite happy to be back on dry land, and not frantic to set off for his mistress just yet. They were both wet through and it was fairly cold this late in the afternoon. Fionn was just wondering if he ought to try drying the contents of Díleas’s basket with a fire, or just take a chance on getting to the Skerry island that was their target, wet and cold, when he spotted the building.
He had excellent recall. He’d seen this angular building with its two chimneys before.
Only that had been in Annvn, not on a steep slope above a fiord in Vanaheim. And…now that he looked carefully, it was attempting to meld with the shadows of the cliffs, to look like a trick of the light. A powerful piece of spellwork, that. And it was clearly and definitely moving.
And now that he tasted the air, it smelled faintly of dead things.
It was time, Fionn decided, to go and ask some questions.
He began running up the slope. The shadowy, hard-to-see house moved faster, almost as if it knew it were being chased.
“I think we’ll have to try and work it as if between two sheepdogs,” he said to Díleas, who plainly did not think a building should be able to move, and probably deserved to be bitten for it. They split and Díleas raced ahead, and Fionn, in dragon form, angled away to flank it. It was a bit steep for houses here, let alone ones that were trying to run away. They cornered it in a corrie and jumped up onto the portico.
“It occurs to me that owners of moving houses may have some nasty surprises waiting inside,” said Fionn to Díleas. “So behind me, dog. Dragons are a lot harder to hurt, or kill, than dogs, and I have not got this close to our human to lose you. Besides, I’ve become fond of you. It’s probably the way you share your fleas. Very generous of you, but they can’t eat me, they just irritate me.”
Fionn looked carefully at the door, at its patterns of energy, and the diagram used to hold it there. The human mage who had done this was no Spathos. This was art and power. The dangerous one-every-ten-generations’ level of human magecraft.
So naturally Fionn scratched a break in the pattern, and added another symbol or two. The mage had thought himself clever to use an invisible ink for this. Well, invisible to human eyes…now he would have a little surprise as the energy in that door accumulated and spread. The break allowed Finn to push the door open.
The inside was even stranger. It was quite a bit larger inside than it appeared outside. That was a neat piece of dimensional folding. Fionn looked for traps. Found none, bar the smell of decay and various exotic chemicals, rare materials and unusual compounds for the apparent vintage of the building. They advanced cautiously along the shadowy passage. Fionn detected symbolic magic at fairly high levels behind one of the doors. He cracked it. Peered inside. It contained a planar orrery, from which a bright light shone patterns onto the floor area. That showed Vanaheim—spiky and ripped with fiords. And yes, there was a shadowy hall in miniature on it, moving slowly across the landscape on tiny muryan legs. “Hmm. ‘As within, so without,’ rather the classic ‘as above so below’ formulation,” said Fionn quietly. So that was how it moved. Dangerous, clever, and tricky. Going any further into the room, Fionn realized, would be even more dangerous. He’d find himself part of the symbolism. And he was too big to survive it.
They moved on. The next door was too heavily spell-guarded to get through quickly. But his nose told him: that was where the smell of decay and exotic chemicals came from. Also there was a fire in there.
“Keep a good few paces back, Díleas. This is no hedge-wizard. This is a great adept. And there is almost bound to be a trap,” he said, sotto voce, in a pitch the dog could hear, but humans would not.
He looked carefully ahead, looking for magic, looking for betraying energy patterns. They’d come to a ramp, and there was an anomaly at the bottom. He could see part of the scripts of it…
And then, as he stepped onto the ramp, he was caught by a purely mechanical trap. The floor—obviously a circular sheet of segments—was on some kind of castors. He barely had time to yell “BACK!” before it had cascaded him into the spell-trap. There was a sharp discharge of magic. And Fionn tumbled into the trap—a sort of box at least twenty cubits deep. There was an opening at the top…but it hummed with energies. Examining it, Fionn could see that it was nothing more than an illusion of an opening. The box was actually solid—barring a fingernail-width gap along the lid, and a small grating in the lowest corner. Too small a grating for a mouse.
He was aware that he was being watched, from the “gap” he’d fallen through. She was, by all appearances, a beautiful woman with flawless skin. She regarded him with a sort of clinical interest. That wouldn’t help him get out, of course. He was also aware that Díleas was behind her. “I wouldn’t come any closer,” said Fionn, hoping sound at least carried out of here. “This is a trap.”
It appeared sound did. “I know. I built it. It is a one-way portal. The walls are adamantine, and the roof is fitted to a device which magically multiplies pressure manyfold. It will shortly crush you and your tissues will flow into the holding vats for the cauldron. It appears the creatures of smokeless flame overrated your cunning and prowess.”
Fionn shrugged. “I took one step further than you are standing, because of the rolling floor. It could happen to you.”
“The floor is now frozen until I reset it. As you are going to die…Agh!! No! Dog…”
She tried to turn and grab, but tumbled over the edge, and into the magical discharge. Fionn caught her to stop her landing on her head.
Díleas looked down at him. “Good dog!” said Fionn, surprised himself at the pride he felt in Díl’s intelligence and ability to take initiative. “Don’t come any closer.”
The woman struggled. Lashed out at him. He caught her hand. She was bleeding where Díleas had bitten her. “Hitting me might make me angry,” said Fionn, “and I think that is all that it could achieve. So stop it. Behave yourself.”
If he’d hit her he could hardly have had more effect. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that!”
“Why not?” asked Fionn sardonically. “Oh I know. You might put me in an adamantine trap and crush me to death.”
She opened her mouth to scream. And then thought better of it. “You have killed me. But I will die like a queen!”
“Actually, I haven’t killed anyone deliberately, yet. And we’re not dead, yet.”
“There is no way out of here,” she said with a gloomy satisfaction.
“Seems very clean for something that has no exit,” said Fionn mildly.
She pointed at the grid in the lowest corner. “The remains flush through there. The muryan come up it and clean out anything that is left.”
“So how long before the roof comes down?” asked Fionn. He hoped that it would not be impossible for Díleas to stop. He could of course resist considerable pressure. But it depended on how much it was.
“It won’t. I did not speak the words to activate it. We will starve or die of thirst in here.”
Fionn hoped not. She smelled faintly ripe already. He objected to eating carrion, and he would live a lot longer than a human, “Surely your faithful henchmen, slaves, retainers…” best to know of those to keep Díleas informed.
“There are only the muryan in this part of the house. The cauldron-men I keep confined elsewhere. And the muryan will only come here to clean every two weeks unless ordered,” she said dully. “So this is how it ends, so close, but yet so far.”
“So close to what?” asked Fionn. “Seeing
we are both doomed, you may as well tell me, and tell me why the creatures of smokeless flame have been telling you about me.”
“Baelzeboul’s master said that his master wanted you dead,” she said. “Running the Cauldron of Gwalar takes a lot of resources, and they were willing to pay.”
Fionn explored the trap with his vision, noting the energy flux points, thinking about the shape. “You are aware, Queen—I presume you are a queen of some sort—that the flame creature’s middle name is treachery. Actually, even if it called itself Baelzeboul, its first name is treachery, middle name is treachery and all the rest are treachery too.”
She raised herself up. “I am Queen Gwenhwyfach. It matters not who knows that now. And I know more about treachery than you can dream. That is why I have labored these fifty years. Lyonesse crumbles…and I am here.”
“I am several thousand years old,” said Fionn calmly, “and the flame creatures have tricked me a few times. They did you, this time. Baelzeboul—if it was the one who calls himself Baelzeboul—stands one below their great master. His master has no master, barring the First themselves. So they wanted me dead, did they? How did you know it was me?”
She drew two little crystal cubes from a pocket. Fionn looked at them, at his own visage, and that of Meb.
“Stranger and stranger,” said Fionn. He hadn’t seen one of those for millennia. “Me. And my Scrap of humanity. I wouldn’t have thought they hated us enough, or that we mattered enough. Or that they still had First-cubes.”
“Your Scrap of humanity? Dragons are now keeping people as slaves and she escaped?”
“I think I was more her babysitter,” said Fionn, smiling at the thought. “But she is a human, yes. A very nice child, growing into a young woman of character and courage. The dog and I are exceptionally fond of her. I would strongly advise you against even thinking about as much as harming a hair on her head. Or you may find being trapped in an adamantine cage with a dragon is a very pleasant thing.”
Something about his voice made her edge away. She caught herself doing so, and steadied her spine. “She is in Lyonesse. She will die. She is just a girl-child.”
“That’s what the flame creature said, was it?” said Fionn. “I suppose to flame creatures any human is fairly unimportant. But this one has the happy knack of making friends, and we don’t think her unimportant. I think one of her friends smashed the fleet today. So, seeing as I am going to die of starvation, how about you tell me, Queen Gwenhwyfach, why you wish to destroy Lyonesse, and just who you are. Someone may as well hear the story.” He yawned. “Sorry, it has been a long day. It’s not that I find you boring.”
“Lyonesse is mine. Mine to destroy for what they did to me.”
“They all did something to you?” asked Fionn. “Every last one of its people, and they’re all still alive, are they? You did say fifty years. Mind you, you are very well preserved.”
“I am as I was seventy years ago, thanks to the Cauldron of Gwalar. And almost all of the ones who conspired against me are dust, dust or grist for the cauldron.”
“So why bother then?” said Fionn, tracing patterns on the adamantine with his claws. “What did they do to you?”
“They stole my child. And that cost me my throne.”
“I see,” said Fionn. “Just a human girl-child, probably.”
“She was a princess. My daughter! Even if she wasn’t the son the king hoped for.”
Fionn nodded. “A grave disappointment to kings, I have been told. No heir.”
She laughed harshly. “He could have no heir. I made sure of that, but he didn’t realize it. He didn’t even know she was a girl.”
“And her name was Anghared,” said Fionn.
“How did you know?” she demanded, darkly suspicious. “No one knew. No one but the midwife. And she would never tell.”
“The knowing of names is a gift of mine. I am afraid I knew your name too. I merely led you on, Gwenhwyfach. And you should never underestimate the treachery of the creatures of smokeless flame, and certainly not their masters. You see, the name of the human girl child in the crystal…is Anghared. I would guess by your posture that she is your daughter. There is something in the jawline that is similar, but you are otherwise not alike.”
The queen of Shadow Hall shook her head. “Impossible. My daughter would be fifty-three years old, if she was still alive. And while I denied it for years, the conspirators must have killed her. I searched for her. And searched for her. I hunted for years with all my art and with all my skill. Every noble house, every hamlet. I decided they must have taken her over the Ways to hide her. I searched Annvn, Vanaheim…the Blessed Isles and onward.”
“She was a lot further away. In a place where time moves slower,” said Fionn.
“I can’t believe you, dragon.” said the queen, eyes narrowed.
Fionn shrugged “Why should I lie to you? I am trapped here, too. We’re both doomed. You may as well tell me the whole sad story.”
She looked at him intently. He said nothing. She would talk or she wouldn’t. “It may be better for the telling,” she said eventually. “I was walking back with my women. I drove them out while the babe was born, and only the midwife was in the room. But there I was, with the babe in swaddling clothes, going out of my chamber for the first time, and suddenly this great drawing magic sucked at her. As if a myriad arms, wrapped around her, pulling, pulling. I clung as hard as I could…I fell out of the window, trying to hold her. But I must have been stunned or…”
She sat in silence for a bit before obviously deciding to continue. “I woke in corpse bay, cold as death and without her. And she was not on the sand. I searched and searched. We do not drown. I couldn’t go back without the child. I knew she’d been taken from me by enchantment, by my enemies from the northern parts, I thought. There was a faction that hated me. And they would claim I killed the child. I…I almost did when the midwife told me it was a girl. But she put the babe on my breast.”
Slowly it came out. Fionn listened. Pieced parts together. She had been a powerful woman, and not afraid to make enemies. Deep in her pride and power.
Broken.
Convinced finally that it had been her husband’s doing, when she had exhausted all the other foes.
“And why would that have been?” asked Fionn, keeping her talking.
“Because he was a fool. But he was the king.” snapped Gwenhwyfach.
She said no more, and Fionn did not press it. But he had an inkling. The woman went on, talking of her capture of a muryan queen, and the gaining of her cauldron—which appeared to be an evasion of “murdered its guardian and stole it,” and the gradual building of her forces with the device. Talking of how hard it was, as the ever-moving Ways to Lyonesse bled magic from the worlds she sought to raise against it.
She didn’t explain how Lyonesse did this. But it helped Fionn to understand Díleas’s changing of direction…and the smell of her and her creations now. And just how she administered to her own vanity in keeping herself flawless, in spite of the side effect of the smell. She herself only had the faintest taint. “Of course if they’re fresher, they smell less,” she said, in reply to his question. “But the cauldron merely requires the patterns of their being. I had to experiment to get the mixtures I wanted, as well as mere copies, to stir the war.”
“Ah,” he said. “Giants. It was very hard to kill. I presume the werewolves are yours too. Anyway, thank you for telling me so much. She is your daughter, and the magic that took her had nothing to do with Lyonesse or with politics at all. It was merely choosing the most powerful mage possible to balance out the absence of humans with that ability in Tasmarin. Tasmarin now achieves its own balance, and she has returned to where she came from. And now, I think I must leave.”
“You can’t. I built this trap to be inescapable.”
Fionn felt that her pride and absolute self-assurance had cost many others their lives. She was Meb’s mother, and he didn’t kill. But she was due some
retribution. “If only you were always right, then it would be. I assume the muryan will come to clean eventually. Here is a bottle of water I keep for the dog that will probably keep you alive until then. You can get them to bring you food and drink, and probably will eventually get out, at which point, if you care to, you can verify what I say. Now, I need to get on to Lyonesse. There is someone I need to find, and puzzles I still need to solve.”
Fionn finished pulling back the long tendril he had transformed his tail into from the drainhole. They referred to dragons as great wyrms sometimes. The device which would press the lid of the trap down, no longer could. “Stand back, Díleas.” He altered his form completely to that of the ancestral wyrm form…which was very well structured for pushing and was a great deal longer than twenty cubits. He used the walls to balance himself and heaved. The lid moved. And moved more, and then popped off, and like a great snake Fionn slid out, shaking the queen off as she tried to cling to him.
“I think, Díleas,” said Fionn, petting the dancing dog, while down in the pit the woman screamed and cursed at him, “that we should leave this place. I understand a lot more about why some humans live in dread of their mothers-in-law.”
CHAPTER 22
Vivien looked landwards from the wall of the castle. Maybe that child and her maid were still alive out there. She’d seen Anghared’s spatha-axe. Seen and understood just how deadly it could be. And she knew, although she was not believed, that Anghared had some powerful magical skills. Maybe she’d been taken by the Fomoire where they’d found the dead one and the blood trail. She hoped and prayed to all the Gods, not. They should never have been able to leave the castle, let alone deal with Medraut’s bodyguard and nasty errand boy. And a Fomoire warrior was bigger and worse yet. And yet…they had.
She hugged herself, not daring to let herself hope again.