by Myers, Karen
An insect landed on his forehead. He felt it, but was incapable of so much as a twitch to send it away. Could I be eaten by bugs, still breathing? A blackness threatened to overwhelm him, and he bowed his head against it. Oh, Cernunnos, not that.
There was no answer. Mag, can you hear me? He listened, but no one replied. He felt nothing with his beast-sense. Only his human senses still seemed to function. He smelt the fresh greenness in the air, the perfume that presaged rain. He heard the buzzing of the insects as they heralded the increased moisture, the bird song returning after the disturbance caused by the car and the two men. Something skittered through the bushes not far away.
I’m on my own, he thought, and there’s little time.
If my father can get to Greenway Court, Angharad will be defenseless. She won’t expect it. I’ll bet he can find the ways—he felt Mag, after all. That’s the worst of it, he thought, a slow death, and no way to defend his family, not even to warn them.
How could his father do this! How could any father? It was inconceivable to him. He felt the surge of anger accelerate his heart and he fought for calm so as not to outpace his breathing again.
A drop of rain fell into the open palm of his outstretched arm, and then another. He could smell the moisture in the air. Maybe I’ll just drown, he thought, on top of a mountain, and that thought woke his morbid humor and finally broke the fear that paralyzed him.
No, he vowed. No, I won’t. Not today. I’m not dying today. There has to be a way out of this maze, out of this trap. He reached up reflexively to clutch Angharad’s arrow pendant and, to his surprise, it was there, in his mental world. The rest of his clothing was hazy, but that felt real to him. He held it out, away from his body, and the arrow swung to the pillar of fading light.
Is that the direction she’s in, he wondered, or the way out?
He turned his back resolutely to the outer darkness and faced the way he had come, holding the arrow on its cord before him. He knew the arrow and its cord were green, but all things were gray in this bleached-out landscape.
On the inward curve of the cell he occupied he saw a small indentation in the wall, like the entrance to a funnel, just wide enough for him to edge through it sideways into the corner of the next innermost cell. That, too, had a similar structure, and he began to follow a series of these inward passages, shifting back and forth as he moved in each layer from the center wall of an outer cell to the corner wall of an inner one. He slipped through as quickly as he could toward the core, where the pillar of light had been replaced by a gray dust cloud in this sunless place.
It seemed to take a very long time, much longer than his initial tumbling blast outward. His breathing stayed the same, but he had no trust in its continuance. He waited in fear for the first faltering breath, the first skipped heartbeat.
He focused again on the smell of the greenery all around his body as it exhaled in the light rain. He smelt the dampening soil, an earthworm, nearby. He paused with one foot lifted. There was a floral scent he couldn’t identify, and then a woody one. That’s not just my nose, he thought, as the foot came down. He turned at the sense of someone behind him, in the maze of cells, but could find nothing, his view impeded by a general haze in the air.
It can’t be my father, he thought. Not the man who culled me, indifferently, like an unwanted puppy. Gil the ghost? No, he never lived. Corniad had never even thought of him as his son, telling the story of his mother’s death. Her murder.
He stood still for a moment and concentrated on what he could hear and smell in the real world. Yes, those are expanded senses, not just my own. Who, then? Is Cernunnos trapped here, too?
Well, it doesn’t make any difference, does it, he thought. I still have to do this myself. He moved on to the next rank of the maze. Like some of the old hedge and tile mazes from hundreds of years ago, it wasn’t really a puzzle, just a very long path to traverse. The shape of these ash-covered cells with their low walls reminds me of something, but I can’t think what. They’re getting smaller. Will they come to an end before I get back to the center? And what will I find there?
He glanced down at Angharad’s pendant, dangling from his hand, and the arrow pointed constantly inward, steady and sure.
From outside he heard his cellphone ring, in his pocket, and felt the vibration through his skin. Benitoe, he thought, calling me. Five rings, and it went to voicemail. The thought of Benitoe trying to figure out how to cope with a cellphone made his imaginary mouth quirk.
Faster, he thought, I have to move faster. The walls of the cells were lower in height in the inner circles, but he couldn’t see very far ahead in the haze. Color had gradually appeared, he noticed—he could make out the green of the arrow on its cord. The light around him softened and warmed, and the sense of a presence behind him strengthened.
He slipped sideways through a cell’s central funnel and stepped into the open space in the center. There he found the ruins of his stone house, with the strange, low, curved walls all around.
He focused his mind as Morien of Gaul had shown him, when he had needed shelter before. He raised a stone cottage, incorporating and clearing away the rubble before him effortlessly. He built it larger than before, and stronger, and the more intently he worked upon it, the more the light around him warmed and grew.
He pulled himself out of the trance and walked to the doorway. Before he entered, he turned, finally, and saluted the ghostly presence that had been following him, inviting him into his mental home.
“My lord Cernunnos, be welcome here.”
Before his eyes, Cernunnos materialized out of the mist as the deer-headed man. He nodded his head to him silently, but declined to enter.
“Why aren’t I dead?” George asked him. He wondered what would happen to Cernunnos if he died, as he surely would, now or someday.
Cernunnos flung his arm outward, in a broad arc, and George followed the gesture, rising above the ground level to win a higher view of the land all around. From that vantage he finally recognized the gray cells that had surrounded him, the low walls he had traversed, each now beginning to fade into the ground and growing softer and more colorful as it did, a blush of pink, a yellow glow, a flash of white. It was the form of an immense, open multi-petaled rose, each petal a cell, now vanishing. That was what had sheltered both of them as Corniad’s blast swept by.
Where was the source of the power for his father’s attack, he wondered. Did Cernunnos cede him part of his own power, as the inheritance of his bloodline? And where did the rose come from?
He looked once more at the god who shared his mind when he wished to, as his feet touched the ground again. Cernunnos had granted him his private integrity, of which this stone shelter was the symbol. It was his to choose, he knew, up to him to settle the terms of this partnership. He understood far better what that meant now than he did when Cernunnos had first had need of him, as huntsman for the great hunt.
He walked over to the deer-headed god, stopped, and with a thought assumed the same form himself. How wonderful, he thought in passing, to have the form back. He began to bend his knee, but stopped himself. He straightened, and then extended his hand to the god instead.
“I will serve willingly, lord,” he said, “upon conditions—my family, my loyalty, my honor.” In this place, there was no impediment to speech in the deer-headed form.
Cernunnos took his hand between both of his, and this time George did sink to one knee. The god knocked his antlers lightly with his own, a clack from the right and the left, and then released his hand and backed away, vanishing again into the mist.
George released the form. He walked back to the doorway of the stone hut and looked out upon the landscape where the imprint of the giant rose had vanished. He entered in and surveyed the warm, comfortable, unsullied room he had created, and dropped Angharad’s arrow back to his chest. He closed his eyes and then, with an effort of will, he opened his real eyes, the eyes of his body, and watched the raindrops splash o
nto the grass stems inches from his face.
He took a deep breath, and then another, and marshalled his strength. He rolled over, gathered his legs underneath him, and stood up, muddy from having been dragged through the dirt, and drenched. He raised his face to the clouds and let the rain wash it all away.
Mag, he thought, projecting clearly. I want you.
CHAPTER 29
“There must be something we can do, Mag,” Benitoe said, consumed with impatience. Seething Magma had retreated into the way-passage a bit so that he could shelter there out of the steady rain.
“I am checking every few minutes,” she rumbled. “He may not be anywhere to be found.”
You mean, he’s dead, Benitoe thought. “No, not the huntsman. I won’t believe it without proof.”
He gave her a hard look. “We’re not going back to tell them, so sorry, we lost our guide. Don’t know what’s become of him. So sad.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you want to say that to Angharad?”
Her response was loud enough to vibrate through his body. “No, I do not.”
There was stillness for a moment, then she resumed her little restless movements. She wants to be doing something, too, Benitoe thought. Her body craves action.
She startled him with a reply to his unspoken words. “I would tear apart these hills to find him, if I just knew where.”
She stiffened suddenly, all over, and Benitoe was put in mind of a hound who had caught the scent he was looking for.
“Stand back and follow me,” she rumbled, and Benitoe flattened himself against the side of the way-passage to avoid contact as she sent her narrowed body out of the way-entrance and built a new way a few yards off. She flowed through that one so swiftly that Benitoe was hard put to keep up. The passage was wider than her body, and he saw daylight ahead soon enough. He slowed down to give her time to exit so that he didn’t run into her himself.
She moved to the side when she exited the way-mouth, and Benitoe followed her, pausing in the entrance to look around.
George stood alone in a cleared area on the mountainside. His light clothing was filthy and glued to his body by the rain. Benitoe’s first relieved greeting died unspoken—he had never seen such a grim look on the huntsman’s face before.
Seething Magma lowered the front part of her mantle to him, and Benitoe thought, but that’s not right, she’s an elemental.
George spoke impatiently. “Cut it out, Mag. I’m not Cernunnos.”
She backed away. “Perhaps not entirely,” she rumbled softly, and Benitoe’s ears pulled back on his scalp.
“How can I help?” she asked.
“He’s after Angharad, and I think he can see the ways. I have to find him first.”
Seething Magma quivered, for all the world like an eager hound, Benitoe thought. It’s a hunt, then, is it?
He stepped out of the way-mouth into the rain. “I’m game, huntsman,” he said. ‘Where shall we cast first?”
Corniad parked the rental car at the far end of the lot for the motel, near the picnic spot he’d visited yesterday. He intended to look the place over more closely, now that George was no longer around to interfere. That odd voice in George’s head, it had smelled to him like a way, and he wanted to know more about it. He dismissed the lutin from consideration—as if one of those could stand against him.
He felt neither the lutin nor the strange creature when he cast about with the beast-sense, but there were ways there, where they had met, two of them. The day before, there had been one, in the same spot. It had something to do with the creature that had spoken to his son, he imagined.
This was an opportunity not to be dismissed, he thought. He retraced his steps to the car and removed the backpack, then returned to the deserted picnic spot, ignoring the soft rain.
He entered the nearest way, cautiously, and stepped carefully to the far end of the passage, taking care to move silently and to stay out of sight of whatever might be just outside. He heard voices—the lutin, his son (alive!), and a strange low voice that he realized must be the maker of the way.
He bent his beast-sense to George, but couldn’t read him—something had changed. The lutin, however… So this was a rock-wight, was it?
It would be folly to reveal himself now, so with regret he retreated noiselessly and returned to the clearing behind the inn. I will have to close with my son again and not rely on the beast-sense, I suppose. Should have slit his throat while I was at it. Careless of me. He sighed at the difficulty he had needlessly made for himself.
Where does the other way lead, I wonder. He trod silently in and through it, and looked out upon the overcast garden visible at the end of the passage. Ah, different weather, he thought, nodding to himself. A location at some distance. This looks promising.
Angharad probed wretchedly at the blank that met her where the distant presence of her husband had been for many months. There was nothing Bedo or Maelgwn could do to improve the situation, so she did her best not to worry them further. Only Imp was of use, draped over her shoulder and purring into her ear, and she stroked him absently.
As abruptly as it had stopped, the link returned, and there he was, in the same place, as best as she could judge. It was as if a faraway light had been snuffed and then relighted. Her hands froze on the cat, and she felt light-headed with relief.
Maelgwn had been watching her patiently and caught the change. “Foster-mother?” he said.
“It’s back, he’s back,” she said. “As if nothing had happened.”
“And maybe nothing did happen,” Bedo suggested.
Angharad nodded. Maybe so.
“Where’s Mag?” Maelgwn said.
Angharad didn’t know and didn’t care. He’s alive! Such a scare she’d had. She’d have to ask him what it felt like from his side. Assuming he’d even noticed, she thought. What could make him go blank that way?
She stood up and put the cat down on her warm cushion. She was too restless to keep still now, and the quiet in the air, the anticipation of the coming rain, spurred her into activity.
“Let’s pick everything up and get it inside before the rain gets here,” she said.
Maelgwn began to move the loose furniture to the back of the veranda to keep it from getting soaked, and Bedo gathered up all the drawing materials, taking several trips to bring it all into the huntsman’s house and stash it out of the way. He was inside on the final leg of his errand when Imp hopped down to the floor of the veranda, arched his back, and set up the most unearthly howling, part snarl, part growl, persistent, loud, and threatening.
Angharad stepped back from him. “What on earth?”
Partway down the path, where she knew Seething Magma’s way was anchored, a man stepped out of nothing.
“George?” she said, taking a quick step, but then she stopped. Her link to her husband hadn’t moved, and this wasn’t him. She could see a strong resemblance, but this man wasn’t as large.
She knew who it had to be. George found him, she said to herself, found his father. This was Corniad Traherne. What’s he doing here, by himself? He planted his feet confidently and took a good look around the garden, with its high walls and the house at one end, the wide veranda stretching across the full width of it. Then he lifted his eyes to hers, slid them down to her waist, and raised them again.
“And who would you be, my lady?” he said, quietly, but the echo of it lingered in her mind—who, who, who—and she opened her mouth to reply before her sense caught up.
She clamped her jaw shut to keep from answering and backed away as he began to walk the short distance to the veranda steps.
Imp’s snarls increased in volume and the tomcat sidled sideways down the steps in front of her, spitting.
Corniad glanced down at the cat and gave it a considering look. “Oh, my lady, you are no beast-master,” he told it. “Perhaps I cannot compel you, but there’s little you can do to me in that form.”
Maelgwn had drawn his saber and pl
aced himself before his foster-mother, up on the veranda. Angharad idly noticed that he was still a head shorter than she was, but it didn’t seem to bother him any. Corniad paused to look up at him from the ground, and the boy gritted his teeth and defied the probe.
“Ah,” Corniad said. “A son, I see, but not of the blood. You have nothing to fear from me, lad.”
Maelgwn refused to budge. “Leave her alone.”
Corniad smiled at the warning. “Well, boy, it’s not really her that I want, but what she carries. There will be no more of my line. And I don’t mean to be stopped.”
Angharad broke free of her shock. She couldn’t have Maelgwn getting himself killed, and she suspected this man could break him without so much as a physical weapon, once provoked. She took a deep breath, then said, “Maelgwn, please step aside. Father-in-law, you are welcome here to your son’s house.”
“Am I, now?” he said, cocking his head. “That’s not what he said, a little while ago.”
He must have tried to kill him, she thought. Is that what I felt? But he’s alive, I can feel him. I know he is.
Delay, I must delay things. He will not take my daughter’s life.
“Come,” she said. “Sit down, and I will fetch you some refreshment.”
“No, I think not,” he said. His lips were pursed with amusement at her maneuver. “I cannot linger here, and I must be done. Sorry that I cannot wait.”
Angharad resumed her own seat as if he hadn’t spoken. She pointed Maelgwn to a corner, and he went obediently, but did not put up his sword. Imp kept up his howling as if possessed.
“And will you tell me why you wish your line to die?” She spoke as calmly as she could, over the cat’s threats. “I’d like to know.”
He grinned at her coldly and shook his head. “That’s between me and the great lord Cernunnos.” He spat the name out.
The distance between them meant nothing, Angharad knew. All he had to do was compel her to approach, and he might succeed. Worse, she suspected he could probably kill her child in the womb, once the thought occurred to him.