by Janzen, Tara
He’d read it too, most of it, and a strange thing it was, a tome in many languages worthy of Madron’s perusal. Pagan philosophy and prophesy were not usually found in Christian abbeys, nor tales of sea dragons and maiden’s blood, stories to rival anything he’d heard in the deserts of Arabia.
There were all manner of dragon tales about these days, the stories having become popular since the Christians had sainted a Cappadocian martyr and dragon slayer, George, and made him the patron saint of England. Nowadays the creatures were a metaphor for everything from demons and devils, to snakes and mercury. Even alchemy had its share of dragons, as allusions to matter, body, and metal; with the dragon’s sister representing spirit, soul, and the elusive quicksilver. The two in opposition created a whole, and the pair were oft depicted as a waxing moon in opposition with its waning counterpart.
As to the red book’s references to “evil men,” well, he’d never had to look very hard to find an evil man, though he’d never met one determined to take a woman’s blood for the sole purpose of luring sea serpents up from the ocean. The most curious Latin snippet he’d read—the one language in the book he’d recognized—had been about something called pryf. They had been referenced to the bowels of the earth and universal salts—whatever those might be—and to secret essences, all of which had sounded alchemical to him and therefore worthy of further study. The book said there were places, mostly caves and such, where one could hear the pryf’s keening cries, and that at those same places one might smell a certain rich earth scent, redolent with a sweetness oft associated with pryf. Unfortunately, there had been no physical description of pryf, but he would keep an eye out, having no aversion to a little dissection if it would provide him with some untried substance for his still.
Ceridwen’s brother’s letters, which she kept in the book, were no less intriguing. Mychael’s mind had a delightfully mystical bend to it. So much so, Dain wondered if he practiced alchemy and the red book was actually his. ’Twasn’t unknown in the monasteries. As to her brother’s lack of current correspondence, mayhaps he’d accidentally killed himself. It happened with alchemy, a thought that brought Dain back to the job at hand, purifying metals for transmutation.
Divine water, he reminded himself, lifting the lamp again.
Taking care of the maid had cut into his work, putting him days behind schedule, yet he felt closer to success than he had in a long time. Purity was the key, utter, absolute purity, and he was achieving it with his new apparatus and the long-awaited eastern cinnabar, the substance used for making mercury, “the dragon’s sister.” The purest metals could be changed into gold by the purest sublimations, the end goal of many, but the least important to Dain’s mind, what with every charlatan in the realm able to double gold. By the same process, the purest gold could be changed into the Philosopher’s Stone, a rare feat for even the most skilled alchemists. And then, by taking the purest Stone and bringing it again through the elements of earth, water, fire, and air in their purest states, the alchemist could extract the elixir and the pneuma, those few precious drops of liquid with the breath of spirit about them, which could transform not just mere metal, but man himself.
Transformation. That was what Dain searched for in his lowest chamber, true magic.
~ ~ ~
Edmee came for him much later, slipping down the wooden stairs in her quiet way. Ceridwen slept, she said with her hands.
“Did she eat the chicken pottage?”
Aye, and a good portion of bread too.
“And you, dear Edmee? Did you also sup?”
When she answered, he understood that he no longer had any nut and honey sweetmeats in his cupboard, for she and Ceridwen had enjoyed every last sticky piece.
He grinned at the audacity of the maid. The sweets had come dear. “Mayhaps you’ll come another day, after I have replenished my supply of comfits.”
A teasing light lit Edmee’s eyes, and his smile broadened. She laughed then, the silence of the sound in no way diminishing her enjoyment. Edmee loved nothing better than getting the best of him, and God knew, she had a rare talent for that.
He was tempted to reach for her, but it wasn’t to be. One of his pots bubbled over, sending a pale golden liquid hissing into the brazier. By the time he’d saved the pan of egg distillate, she was gone. He caught the last flash of her skirt as she disappeared up the stairs and dropped something behind her. A rolled bit of parchment it was, floating to the floor with uncommon grace.
He wiped his hands on a rag before picking up the message and bringing it to his nose. Madron. There was no wax seal, which in no way meant the letter was not important or private. Madron never lowered herself to flagrant measures when the subtle sufficed. The scent of smoke and the herb selago was enough to warn any local ruffian of whose wrath he would engender should he violate either the messenger or the message. A thief from outside the demesne would not fare so well.
The witch had shown Dain the magic of it one night, taking a letter written to another and passing it over a brazier of coals holding a sprig of the herb. Smoke had curled up and around the folds of parchment while she’d chanted the person’s name. When she’d given it to him, the letter had been warm but unchanged. He’d felt it all around and found nothing, then he’d opened it and damn near burned his fingers on the flame that burst forth and consumed the message. Much to his annoyance Madron had not shared the secret of the trick, and he’d been too full of wine that night to discern it for himself.
Not so this afternoon. The only wine he’d had was what he’d put into his still.
The letter opened without mishap, but not without effect. ’Twas an invitation to dine in the witch’s own lair, always an interesting evening, and this one promised to be even more so. He had never been encouraged to bring a guest, let alone commanded to bring one. Ceridwen, it seemed, was the exception. Madron wanted to meet the maid.
~ ~ ~
The Cypriot picked her way through the moonlit forest, her warm breath clouding the night air, her delicate hooves snapping twigs and crushing dry leaves. Ceridwen flinched at each sound, sure they were announcing their folly to wolves and any number of beasts and brigands.
“These woods are safe, else I would not have brought you,” Dain said at her back, shifting his hold on the reins to better cover her with his cloak.
His assurance helped but little when combined with his nearness and her unshakable conviction that they were being watched.
“’Tis not far,” he added—as if that helped. She saw no reason to meet the woman named Madron, especially when it meant riding through the Wroneu Wood at night. She’d told him as much and had made not a dent in his course of action.
He had not won all, though. One good thing had come from the night’s journey. She now knew there was another way out of the tower besides the door in the middle chamber, which, unlike any other she’d ever encountered, did not open when the latch was lifted. There were no locks on the damn thing. It looked ordinary enough, but it did not open. The first time she’d struggled with it, she’d thought mayhaps it was the weight that kept it from moving—’twas a huge door set into bluestone. But she was stronger now, and when she’d found herself alone for a few moments that morning, she’d tried it again. Nothing had moved. Escape, if it was to come, she’d realized, would have to come by another route, and tonight Dain had shown her the way. True, she’d been blindfolded, but she had other senses. There was a door in the lower chamber, a vile, sulfurous-smelling room, and beyond the door was a tunnel leading to freedom.
A shiver coursed down her spine. She had not liked the tunnel, the closeness and the cool damp of it, the echoes of sound bouncing from wall to wall. It had reminded her of another long-ago place that was reaching out for her again, calling for her to return—the caves beneath Merioneth and the passage marked pryf.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“Nay, ’tis only—Ahh.” She let out a gasped cry as the mare snorted and reared up.
> Dain swore and lunged forward, flattening Ceridwen against his chest as he grabbed a fistful of the Cypriot’s mane.
“Nej!” he commanded, pulling the horse’s head down by the reins. She obeyed immediately and stood trembling beneath them, her flanks heaving. “Llynya, damn your hide, show yourself before the mare’s heart bursts from fright.” He called the words out into the trees, but was answered with naught but silence.
Her pulse racing, Ceridwen searched the overhanging branches and reached for the gold-and-silver dagger she’d hidden in her boot. Her instincts had been right. They were being watched.
“Llynya,” the sorcerer warned in a tone that set the hairs on Ceridwen’s nape on edge. He’d used much the same voice the night she’d tried to sic Numa on him. Llynya would do well to run while she had the chance, though what a woman was doing in the forest alone at night was beyond Ceridwen’s imagining.
“O Great One,” a female voice boomed out, coming from on high.
The Cypriot shied to the left, into a patch of gorse, and was startled all over again by the prick of a spine. Ceridwen pulled her knife, prepared to fight.
“What’s this?” Dain grabbed her wrist and turned it to throw light on the blade, letting the horse prance between shafts of moonlight and the shadows.
“Mayhaps my life,” she said through gritted teeth, trying to jerk free and failing. “Or yours.”
“I think not.” He disarmed her with one hand and hollered again, “Llynya!”
A faint rustling was heard from above, followed by a branch falling to the ground and a soft curse.
“Aye, you’re losing your touch, sprite.” Dain laughed and pulled Ceridwen even closer, much to her dismay. “Come hither and state your case.”
“’Tis not my case, O Great One, but Rhuddlan who bids you welcome in his camp.” Another curse followed the pronouncement, then a dark-haired angel fell out of the sky and landed in a thicket of elderberry bushes.
“Jesu.” Dain was off the horse and racing for the woman even before she hit. “Llynya.” He pushed his way into the bushes and bent over the slight form.
Ceridwen didn’t wait to discover if the foolhardy Llynya had died. She leaned close over the Cypriot’s neck and kicked the horse hard. The mare broke into a run, only to be brought up short.
“Bliv!” Dain barked out the command, and Ceridwen’s escape came to a hoof-sliding halt.
She kicked the horse again and was rewarded with a nip to her leg. She would have given it another try, but suddenly she was surrounded. Half a dozen men dropped from their hiding places in the trees, each one landing with a lightness that belied the height from which they’d jumped. Like nighthawks they were, with their hair streaming down behind them and their cloaks spread out like wings.
Four instantly nocked arrows into their bows and stood facing out from the circle they made around the edge of the clearing. The fifth sprinted toward Ceridwen and took the Cypriot’s reins. The sixth, their leader by his bearing, strode directly to Llynya and Dain. All the newcomers were tall and slender, with broad shoulders, long legs, and all but one had pale hair that shimmered in the moonlight. Their cloaks were multicolored in shades of gray and green, their leggings and tunics the same, all belted with braided strips of a tawny hue. More strange than the commonness of their dress were the marks upon their faces, broad swaths of darkness painted on in lines both horizontal and diagonal. Ceridwen near swooned, sure she and Dain had brought wood demons down upon themselves.
“How fares she, Lavrans?” The leader spoke, his voice soft and deep, and clear like the winds of spring, not at all like any demon she’d imagined.
“She is of the Quicken-tree clan, Rhuddlan,” Dain said. “It will take more than an elderberry bush and a fall from an oak to kill her. See, already she comes back to us.”
Assured somewhat by Dain’s familiarity, but heartily wishing he had not taken her knife, Ceridwen strained to see around him and the man called Rhuddlan to where the woman was beginning to stir.
“‘Twas Shay I sent to find you, not Llynya,” Rhuddlan said, “but she is always overeager to prove herself. We caught up with her just as she fell.”
“I didn’t fall.” Still splayed across the elderberry, the woman spoke in a weak voice. “Shay pushed me.”
“Did not,” the young man holding the Cypriot’s reins said, his shoulders squaring and his chin jutting out. His paint was diagonal, as were all the bowmen’s, leading from his right temple to the left side of his jaw, and his hair was dark, near black. “Ye slipped.”
“Slipped with your hand pressin’ on my back,” Llynya retorted with surprising strength.
“I was trying to keep you from breakin’ your neck.”
“And you knocked me clean off my perch with all your care.”
No woman, this, Ceridwen thought, listening to them bicker. Llynya sounded no more than a girl. A tousled head lifted up from the bushes between Dain and Rhuddlan. Twigs and leaves were stuck this way and that in the tangled and plaited hair surrounding the imp’s dirty, but otherwise unmarked face. She stuck her tongue out at the stoic Shay, confirming Ceridwen’s guess.
“’Twould be safer to let them resolve the shoving match in camp,” Dain suggested, helping Rhuddlan free the trapped Llynya.
“Aye.” Rhuddlan laughed and dusted the girl’s bottom before setting her loose. She disappeared in a twinkling, melting into the forest with nary a sound to mark her passing.
The unnatural feat brought a frown to Ceridwen’s face, tugging as it did at a memory she could not quite bring to the fore.
“Come,” Rhuddlan said, clapping his hand on Dain’s shoulder. “Share our meal and let us fill you with drink.”
“The air fair reeks with hospitality this e’en, Rhuddlan,” Dain said, smiling at his friend. “Madron has also invited me to sup.”
“That one will do naught but work you over,” Rhuddlan warned with a knowing grin. “Let her wait until morn.”
“She takes to waiting like an unmilked cow,” Dain said dryly.
“Aye,” the Quicken-tree leader agreed, “but we travel north before dawn, and I would talk with you.”
“North?” Dain repeated, not bothering to hide his surprise. “You could have hardly more than arrived, and are weeks early, at that.” The people of Quicken-tree did not often come to Wroneu Wood before Beltaine. “What awaits you so urgently in the north?”
“Trouble at the least,” Rhuddlan said, his expression growing somber. “Mayhaps more.”
~ ~ ~
The Quicken-tree camp was set deep in the heart of the woods, approachable only by a trail that wound a narrow path behind the cascade of a thundering waterfall. Ice crystals glazed the water-worn track, glinting in the torchlight and adding treachery to each step. Dain led the way, the river sheeting in a liquid arc over his head.
He had not been to the secluded grove of oak and rowan since the Yule, when the river had been frozen and the trees had been deep in snow. He’d spent the night alone, nursing a strange melancholy and tending a fire in the remains of one of the previous summer’s willow shelters. ’Twas the first time he’d been in the grove alone; Rhuddlan and his people had long since left. They were always gone before the first snow and never returned until after the last one. Summer folk they were, with the freshness of spring always about them, new and green like tender young shoots. Except for the bowmen. “Liosalfar” they were called, and they had the demeanor of an elite guard.
Madron knew them well, though she’d said little beyond the advice she’d given him when he’d first come to Wydehaw, that any service he could provide the Quicken-tree would be repaid tenfold.
Dain smiled. Madron was a witch. He had no doubt that she had known exactly what service Rhuddlan and his people would need of him and exactly how much it would cost him to provide it. They wanted nothing less than on one night a year, May Eve, that he who believed in nothing should believe enough for all of them. Beltaine, they called the night in
an older tongue, and Galan Mai in an even more ancient language, but by any name the night was filled with the heavy magic of a fecund, blossoming earth.
His smile faded as he pulled his cloak tighter around himself. It had been a lot to ask of a cynic, yet time and again he returned to the Quicken-tree. Their demands were not so great that he could not comply, and they paid him well enough: this year in cinnabar, the year before in gold. Their first gift had been the Cypriot, freshly foaled from Rhuddlan’s mare.
The Quicken-tree leader was generous with his knowledge of the planets and the stars too, and was especially learned when it came to the elements of the earth. He had also known Nemeton, builder of the Hart Tower.
In truth, Dain had come to look forward to his time with the strange, landless folk who wandered at will bound up in a religion that no longer existed except in their own hearts. Wales was full of pauper princes, men with a noble lineage and little else, men like Morgan. Rhuddlan and his band fared better than most, carrying with them no more than the poorest desert tribes did, but never going hungry, and never reduced to wearing rags to keep out the cold.
The midway point of the water track was marked by a rock jutting out of the overhanging ceiling. The massive stone sliced an opening in the falls, leaving a space for the river fog to gather into a misty, earthbound cloud. Farther back, a cave entrance loomed darkly, sucking little wisps of vapor toward its mouth. Dain looked over his shoulder to check Ceridwen’s location before stepping into the mists.
Rhuddlan brought up the rear of the small band, his gaze straying often to Rhiannon’s daughter, searching in vain for signs of the mother. For all the fairness of Ceridwen’s face, a softness was missing, a softness of spirit that had enabled Rhiannon to stand in the gateway of time and see the present clearly. He had been in the caves the last time she had done so, the night men had brought war to Carn Merioneth, the night she had died.