Bound into the Blood

by Myers, Karen

  For a moment, the thought of his mother’s dream warning overlaying Angharad’s warning not to be so trusting. I’m not being trusting, he told them both, in an imaginary dialogue. I’ll be careful.

  CHAPTER 25

  “I’ve never asked you, Dyfnallt,” Angharad said. “What did you think when you first met Mariah Catlett?”

  Bedo held his piece of bread suspended in the air for a moment, waiting for the answer. They’d made it through the lamb stew and were just mopping up the remainder with the remnants of the crusty bread.

  Dinner at the huntsman’s house with company was more pleasant than he’d anticipated. Angharad kept her customary place at the foot of the table, and the spot at the head, usually left empty for George in his absence, was filled for now by Maelgwn, trying not to look uncomfortable at the honor.

  Dyfnallt was seated directly across from Bedo, with Alun on his left, while Bedo had Ives for his partner. Bedo recognized Angharad’s attempt to mix them up and, considering there were no other women present, he thought she’d done a good job of it. By now, everyone except Maelgwn and Angharad had downed a few beers, and tongues were beginning to loosen up.

  “Well, my lady, I’d never seen anything like it.” Dyfnallt looked down the table to his hostess. “We were running blind in the middle of the night, covered with soot, our eyes watering. Maelgwn took us through the Guests’ Way, that special branch that leads to the human world. Each of the four of us had a sack of puppies and their dams on leads, and no beast-masters among us to make sure the free pack stayed together, all twenty-odd couple of ’em.”

  Maelgwn chimed in. “Dyfnallt told ’em to ‘pack up’ and they did, right through the way and everything.”

  “And you showed us where to go,” Dyfnallt said, nodding to him. “So, we come tumbling out the other side and there’s no fire, no commotion. Just a quiet little house among some trees. Neat as you please, Benitoe trots up the steps of the porch and pounds on the door.”

  He paused to take a drink. “And then, like a stroke of lightning, this great big light comes on, over his head. I got used to them later, of course, but if you’ve never seen their lights”—this addressed to Ives and Bedo—“you can’t imagine how bright it was.

  “I stopped in my tracks, I did, and the hounds with me, but out comes this woman in her nightclothes, takes one look at us, and instead of shutting the door in our face, tells us to just stay put and she’ll get some help.”

  He laughed. “I can’t imagine what my wife would have said if forty hounds and thirty young’uns had turned up on her doorstep unexpected.”

  Bedo noted how he sobered suddenly, at the mention of his wife, losing some of the animation in his thin face. He felt lucky that he hadn’t had to leave anyone behind, himself.

  “Well, you know the rest. George’s grandfather Gilbert came over and we bedded everyone down in the empty stables at Bellemore, us and the hounds. But I swear, the whole time I was there my jaw got sore from dropping every few moments when I stumbled across some new wonder.”

  “Like what?” Alun asked.

  “Well, like those lights everywhere. And the cars. Gilbert loaned us some horses so we could exercise the hounds proper, and this great metal trailer shows up, pulled by a monstrously large truck, they call it. I’ve never seen a wagon so large, and no team of horses to pull it. The roads, too, even the small ones on the farm, they had this smooth even stony surface, only it wasn’t stone. Mrs. Catlett told me they pour the material onto the ground from great big trucks with round revolving tanks. I can’t even imagine it.”

  He took another drink. “Water wherever you need it. Well, they’ve got that here, too, don’t they, but not where I grew up. Fans—now there’s a grand device for keeping cool. The stoves that don’t use wood. And not a bit of magic in the lot, so they tell me.”

  “I’d like to see it again,” he concluded, “when I’m not running and hiding from our enemies.”

  “So would I,” Bedo couldn’t help but add.

  “I’ve heard so much from Benitoe, I have to see it for myself,” Ives said, nodding in agreement.

  What an odd group this is, and how strange our experiences have been, Bedo thought. Maelgwn—his family is dead, over the Blue Ridge, and he raised himself with a rock-wight youngster, Seething Magma’s kidnapped daughter. Alun’s in service to a human now. Dyfnallt and I are both displaced from our origins, and even Ives spends much of his time with the fae instead of the lutins.

  Only Angharad still holds her original place, well-respected among the fae. And even she has done a strange thing, to wed with a human and bear his child.

  Dyfnallt has to learn how to make a place for himself here, and so do I, Bedo thought. Angharad was right—there’s no reason for me to think myself alone and friendless. It’s up to me to change that. No one here cares what I was before.

  “I’ve heard you do some wood-carving, Dyfnallt,” he said, “and you, too, Alun. I’ve never tried my hand at that, myself. D’ya think you could show me some of your work, both of you?”

  Dyfnallt sought out Ives after the hound walking early the next morning. He hadn’t ventured into Ives’s own office very often since he’d come a few months ago.

  At first he hadn’t cared to, but now he thought of it as an intrusion. Cuhelyn would never have encouraged it at his kennels, and Dyfnallt was ashamed now to realize how little it had bothered him, treating the kennel staff as parts of the machine that made the kennels run smoothly. And Cuhelyn’s kennel-men weren’t even lutins.

  Something about last night’s easy conversation around the dinner table had shaken him. What’s the point of envying George his friendly relations with all his kennel staff, he thought. I’ve been holding something of a grudge about it, haven’t I? That’s daft, that is. First of all, I like Benitoe, and he’s fine as a whipper-in. And I like Ives, too, he admitted, even if I haven’t shown it much.

  Bedo and he had gone off to Iolo’s old workroom in the huntsman’s house with Alun after dinner. Dyfnallt had encouraged Alun to show Bedo some of his work first while he sat back and watched. Alun let his enthusiasm master his normal professional reserve, and soon the two of them were chatting away while Alun demonstrated some of the tools. Bedo made some remark about work with Angharad and, suddenly, the old constraint returned, Alun retreating into polite responses.

  The pain that flitted across Bedo’s face hadn’t been lost on Dyfnallt. He’s feeling shut out again, isn’t he, he’d thought. I recognize the feeling, every time I dined in Cuhelyn’s hall, at the far end of the same table. Not like here, when you can’t predict who will join you for a meal sometimes.

  Such a strange place this land of Annwn is. You can’t really be sure about anyone. It seems like they’re changing all the time. The king talks to the gate-keeper, the lutins accost the steward, and youngsters like Maelgwn chat with rock-wights. Where are the decent lines between them to keep such chaos from overwhelming them?

  He’d laughed quietly to himself at the time. Here’s Bedo, a servant, but not servant enough to make Alun comfortable. If he becomes as skilled as Angharad, why, he’ll be above me. So what is he now?

  I’m a child of a line of huntsmen, he thought. That had always made him proud. S till did. But now he also felt a bit… stodgy. Like Alun, who was discomforted by change. Am I the same, he wondered, stuck in my ways? An unpleasant thought.

  I’ve lost Gwenith to this change of fealty, he thought. She couldn’t adapt. He missed her, but they had been pulling apart for some time, and this was merely the final cut. He’d half expected it. But I can’t just drift here, he thought—the wave of change in this unpredictable place would sweep him away.

  He knocked on Ives’s doorframe, having peeked inside the open doorway to make sure the kennel-master was there. I need to choose whole-heartedly for myself, he thought.

  “Do you have a minute, Master Ives?” he asked. “I wanted to ask your advice.”

  Ives waved him in, an
d Dyfnallt saw the brief flicker of surprise that crossed his face, before it smoothed back into his professional expression.

  Dyfnallt found a chair suitable for his size and hauled it over to the front of Ives’s desk, shoving the smaller one already there off to the side.

  “Dinner last night set me to thinking,” Dyfnallt said. “Thinking about lots of things.”

  “What can I help you with?” Ives said, and it reminded Dyfnallt of his father when he was a boy, when he came to him with a problem about a horse or a hound. With a shock, he recalled that Ives was a bit younger than he was—there was just something about him that seemed ageless and well suited to this role. He supposed it was the result of training generations of kennel-men and the young scions of the house who spent time with the hounds as part of their education.

  “Well, it’s a bit hard to explain,” he said. “I had no choice, you know. I couldn’t let Gwion burn the pack in the kennels. When I helped stop that, I cut my ties to Cuhelyn and there was no going back.”

  Ives nodded.

  “Everyone’s been kind to me, and George has been very generous. I have no complaints, you understand.” Dyfnallt could hear a stiffness in his own voice that he regretted.

  “What is it, huntsman?” Ives asked. “I won’t betray your confidence.”

  “Well, the new season is coming up soon. There’s really only room for one huntsman here, and that’s George, of course.” He stopped again, unwilling to voice his worry.

  Ives took the problem away from him. “You’re worried about what’ll be left for you, is it?”

  Dyfnallt smiled in relief. “Aye. I don’t want to cause any problems or get in the way, but I could be doing so much more, I think.”

  “That you could,” Ives said, as if this were the most normal conversation in the world to be having, instead of a betrayal of Dyfnallt’s duty to the head huntsman.

  “And so you should be,” Ives continued, “and George would be the first one to tell you so. Have you talked to him about it?”

  “I’m not sure how to do it, without seeming ungrateful.”

  Ives waved that aside. “George doesn’t care about that.”

  He tilted his head and looked speculatively at Dyfnallt. “Do you want to know what I think?”

  “Please, kennel-master.” Dyfnallt straightened in his chair.

  “I think Gwyn and George will help you do whatever you want, huntsman. You could go elsewhere in the kingdom and build a local pack for one of the high fae under Gwyn, like you did for Cuhelyn.” He raised three fingers of his hand and ticked off that choice.

  “You could build a second pack here. A different strain of hounds, or maybe a footpack. George is always going on about beagles and bassets. There’s enough room to add to the kennels, and we’re a hunting people—I’m sure you’d find plenty to follow you.”

  That left one finger.

  “And there’s a third possibility.” Now it was Ives’s turn to pause, to look over at Dyfnallt to judge the prudence of what he was about to say.

  “Rhian wants to hunt the hounds, but I think she’s going to find that her other responsibilities make it impossible for her to do that very often. That just leaves you and George. And George, he’s not been here long, less than a year.”

  Dyfnallt cocked an eyebrow at him. What was Ives getting at, he wondered.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Dyfnallt,” Ives said. “George is a fine huntsman and he did well at the great hunt last year. We enjoy working with him. But who knows what will happen next? The way I see it, Cernunnos has plans for him. Maybe that’s just for the great hunt, maybe it’s for something else. I don’t know. I doubt George does, either.”

  Ives folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back in his chair.

  “Rhian told me something, once, that she overheard when they were all in Gaul. Ceridwen was talking about Cai, about how the gods took an interest in him. Angharad was married to him, once, you know.”

  Dyfnallt had heard of Cai. He was a famous champion, a righter of wrongs. What sort of coincidence could bring the same woman to wed this human huntsman? What was Ives claiming?

  “All I’m saying is, things happen to George, and they seem to happen in a hurry. Maybe he’ll be too busy to serve as huntsman,” Ives said.

  Dyfnallt said, slowly, “I wish no harm to him, Ives.”

  “No, of course not. Nor I. But there’s no denying he does lead a complicated life. And in that, you may find opportunity to satisfy you. Who knows?” He spread his hands, palms up.

  “If you’ll take my counsel, huntsman, you’ll discuss all this with George. There’s naught to fear in that.”

  “Maybe so, Ives,” Dyfnallt said, “Maybe so.” Perhaps Ives was right, he thought.

  “May I ask you a question, huntsman?” Ives said.

  “Aye, whatever you like.”

  “I understand your wife wouldn’t join you.” He watched Dyfnallt’s face for a reaction, then continued. “Ah, like that, is it? Well, it’s not the first time an old marriage wouldn’t stand the strain.”

  Dyfnallt half-smiled. “It was just the excuse for the end. We all get into a rut sometimes.”

  Ives nodded. “That’s what I suspected. That being the case, have you thought about settling down with a family here, then?”

  Dyfnallt was taken aback. Have I gotten so used to feeling like an outsider here that I never even conceived of it, he wondered. The simple quarters assigned to him further out along one of the lanes were adequate but not… homelike. Not heart-warming, the way a place became when more than one lived there.

  Where would I even begin to look, he thought.

  He flashed Ives a skeptical look. “And me without a pet yet, or even a plant.” They both laughed. Still, it was something to think about.

  Dyfnallt rose. “Thank you, Master Ives,” he said, sincerely. “You’ve advised me well, and I’m grateful. It was the act of a friend.”

  There. This time he was sure of the surprise on Ives’s face. Have I been so hopelessly formal all this time? I can do better than that, he thought, as he stood to go.

  There are friends to be had here. I wonder if Bedo would like to join me some evening. I could give him that elm blank I’ve prepared and help him get started with a wood chisel.

  CHAPTER 26

  Angharad lifted her head from her sketch when Imp bounded down the veranda steps and walked to his accustomed spot along the path. The morning light had darkened over the last hour as clouds gathered, and she expected it might rain in not too long.

  Maelgwn stood up from where he’d been crouching by the side of her chair, his sword’s scabbard scraping against the wood. Thomas Kethin had encouraged him to become accustomed to the constant presence of the saber his foster-brother Rhys had given him.

  “Again?” she asked Maelgwn. He nodded, watching the rock-wight emerge from her way. “Look, Mag’s got another rosebush.”

  “What a surprise,” Angharad said dryly. She heard Bedo’s discreet snort of amusement from the other end of the veranda as he put his brush down to watch.

  “Let’s see how well you do sketching a rock-wight,” she said to him repressively, and he obediently picked up a sketch pad and charcoal, seating himself on the top step for a good view.

  Seething Magma poured out of the way and down the garden path. Imp kept pace with her as she flowed forward and laid a large white rose bush at the base of the steps.

  “From your husband,” she rumbled.

  “Only one this time?” Angharad inquired.

  “Unusual restraint. He said so at the time.”

  Angharad laughed out loud at Seething Magma’s joke.

  “How are they, Mag?” she asked. She tried to lean forward, but it was awkward for her, with the baby, so she lay back again to accommodate it.

  Seething Magma settled down along the garden path and offered a wide, flat pseudopod to Imp who took advantage of it to bounce up to her top surface and stretch out in
what little remained of the sunlight.

  “I have completed my tasks for this first exploration, and so has Benitoe,” she said. “We both have much to think about before we make our next plans. Benitoe is writing a report.”

  “So, when are you all coming back?” Maelgwn asked.

  “Perhaps today. Your foster-father has found his own father, alive, and that has kept us past our expectation.”

  This news, in Mag’s deep voice, brought Angharad to her feet.

  “Truly?” she said. She was alarmed, and felt along the link to the arrow pendant she’d given George. He seemed fine, but she wasn’t reassured.

  “What’s he like? What’s his story?” she asked.

  “I do not know. I know what he says, but I cannot hear him, as I can all of you.”

  “And what did you think of him?” Angharad asked, her heartbeat speeding up.

  The rock-wight held herself absolutely still before replying. “I cannot judge the short-lived well, but I do not like him.”

  “Is George with him now?” Angharad said.

  “Soon,” Mag rumbled. “He was sure there was no danger, and told me to tell you not to worry. He said he would summon me, at need. Benitoe waits nearby, too.”

  Telling me not to worry, Angharad thought. As if that were possible. Well, there was little she could do about it and she forced herself to sit down again, carefully.

  She draped one hand protectively across what was left of her waist. “Tell me what you know, please, Mag,” she said.

  Bedo sketched busily as Seething Magma told them what they’d been doing for the past few days. Angharad settled down to take it all in, but kept a mental touch on her tenuous connection to her husband, quiet in the background, like the hum of the insects in the garden.

  George picked up his father at the turnoff to the stable. He carried a backpack which he stowed in the trunk of the car.

  “I’ve taken the day off and we can be quite undisturbed,” Corniad said, as he got into the rental car. “I have a lot to tell you about.”