by Holly Taylor
“Then,” Penda said as he shrugged into a fur-lined cloak and pulled on his boots, “take me to them.”
And as he walked down the hallways of Caer Tir he walked confidently and proudly. For the time for indecision had passed. Now he knew what he must do.
For he was free, indeed.
THE CELL WHERE the prisoners were being held was on the first floor of the northwest watchtower. This tower was on the side of Caer Tir directly over the cliffs leading to the sea. When he had first determined to put the prisoners there his captain had protested, saying that there was surely a passageway from the cells leading to the cliffs. And Penda had agreed that was no doubt true, and his steely gaze had dared his captain to reply. But his captain had known better and had done as he was told.
He entered the tower and turned to face the cells, where the three families that he had detained stood against the bars. The chamber was cold and clammy, the only light coming from a brazier set in the middle of the room, well away from the cells themselves.
In front of the cells Ellywen stood with her hands tied behind her back and two guards on either side of her, her manner icy and calm, but a telltale pulse beat wildly at her slim throat.
A stranger stood next to her, his hands also bound behind him. The man had sandy brown hair and his brown eyes were wide with fear. Penda thought he might know who the man was and, when King Erfin came stumbling in, followed by Efa, he was proved right.
“Cadell!” Erfin cried. “General Penda, it’s Cadell, Rhoram’s Dewin! How did he come to be here?”
“No doubt, Erfin,” Penda said in bored tones, “he came here through one of the secret passages that run through the cliffs.” Penda nodded to a gaping hole in the wall. “They meant to rescue the prisoners and take them out through here.”
“You knew that this would happen?” Erfin asked, bewildered.
Penda sighed. Erfin had always been immensely stupid. “Of course.”
“So, Ellywen,” Efa said gleefully as she came to stand before the bound Druid, “I see you must have had a change of heart. And how did my husband persuade you to join him?”
“He didn’t, Efa,” Ellywen said with contempt. “He didn’t even have to try. I simply realized what I was doing was wrong.”
“Ha! Wrong!” Efa sneered.
“Yes, wrong. I knew it when I helped to capture Rhoram’s Bard. Cian and I had known each other a long time, yet I delivered him into the hands of the Golden Man just the same. The night I heard the death song of the Master Bard was when I knew I could not go on as I had been. That was when I was sickened by my own behavior. That was when I knew that the teachings of the Archdruid were false—false to Kymru, and false to the Mother herself. False to anyone who had the wit to see it. Which I finally did.”
“And so you began to help the Cerddorian,” Penda said.
Ellywen nodded, for she knew it would be useless to deny it. “I helped Aidan, Rhoram’s lieutenant, and Cadell escape from Arberth some months ago and it was then that I truly began to help the Cerddorian. Though I must admit,” she went on with a wry look at Cadell, “it took them a while to trust me.”
“But they did trust you, eventually,” Penda said softly. “And you began to help them in earnest. By passing messages through the likes of these folk.” He gestured to the Kymri in the cells.
“No,” Ellywen said calmly. “You are wrong about these people. They were merely cover for the real people I was passing messages through.”
At that Erfin and Efa began to squabble with Ellywen, for neither the king nor his sister believed the Druid. And that was just what Penda wanted. For he did not believe Ellywen either, and he knew she would lie on that point. And he knew, too, that the ensuing argument would give him the chance he needed, the chance he now knew he had to take to begin the new life the gods had promised him.
Unnoticed by any he leaned forward slightly and murmured in Cadell’s ear. “Be ready.”
Cadell started, and looked swiftly up at Penda with a mixture of fear, mistrust, and dawning understanding. But the Dewin knew better than to ask questions, and bowed his head quickly, fixing his eyes on the floor.
“Enough!” Penda roared, when the argument had reached a fever pitch. Ellywen, Efa, and Erfin stopped immediately and turned to face him. Penda gestured for the guards to open the cells. “Release the prisoners.”
“General!” Erfin cried. “How can you even think such a thing? They are traitors to me!”
“They are not,” Penda said calmly as the guards did as he bid. “They are bait. As the quarry has been captured they are useless to me.”
“How can you say such a thing?” Efa sputtered as she came to stand before him. “Any half-wit—”
“Lady, you will hold your tongue,” Penda interrupted, his eyes glinting dangerously.
Efa’s indignation was replaced by fear as she slowly backed away a few steps. Erfin came to her and put his arm around her shoulders. Her beautiful eyes were wide and shocked, for she had never yet experienced Penda at the edge of rage.
Penda turned to look at the released prisoners, and as he turned he caught Cadell’s eye. He gave an almost imperceptible nod then stepped forward. But as he stepped forward Cadell cried out and lashed out with his foot, tipping over the brazier. The glowing coals scattered across the floor and Efa shrieked, trying to get out of the way. As she jumped back she fell heavily against Erfin. Erfin and Efa went down, Efa screaming as she landed.
Penda, meanwhile, had already whipped out his dagger and, with one swift, unseen movement in the now almost-dark chamber, cut Cadell’s bonds. With a mighty shove he propelled Cadell through the dark opening in the wall and hoped that he had not pushed the Dewin too hard. Before anyone could properly see what he had done he fell back against the group of prisoners and they all went down in a welter of cries and tangled limbs.
It took just a few moments for additional guards to rush in and try to sort them all out. Penda was pulled to his feet, panting, hoping he hadn’t overdone his fit of clumsiness. Apparently he hadn’t, for even Efa, suspicious as she was, did not accuse him of helping Cadell to escape. In fact, the only person in the room who seemed to suspect what had truly happened was Ellywen herself. And she, of course, did not say a word. She merely looked at him with her fine, gray eyes and without a hint of expression on her beautiful face. But for a moment her mouth had twitched when Penda recovered his balance and brushed at his now-dirty cloak.
“The Dewin has escaped, my lord,” his captain said as the man emerged from the tunnel. “It’s a regular warren down there with no means to determine which way he went.”
“A shame,” Ellywen said softly.
“Collar her,” Penda said briefly as he gestured for his guards to take the Kymric families to the gate and return them to their homes.
“Yes,” Efa said with a smile as Ellywen’s face froze and fear and panic shone in her gray eyes. “Collar her.”
“Go to bed, Efa,” Penda said shortly. “You, too, Erfin. Now.”
They left without argument as an enaid-dal was snapped around Ellywen’s neck. The Druid paled and tears spilled from her eyes. The guards pushed her into a cell and locked the door. Ellywen sank to the cold, stone floor and bowed her head, her hands still tied behind her back. She moaned softly in horror and despair at what the soul-catcher had done to her. At Penda’s sharp gesture the guards stepped away from the cell and back out to the outer door. Penda walked to the cell and wrapped his hands around the bars. He let Ellywen weep for a moment, knowing that she needed to.
“Tomorrow I will have you put on a horse and taken to Afalon,” Penda said quietly. “A place, I feel sure, you will never reach.”
Ellywen’s head came up and she lifted her tear-streaked face in dawning hope.
“I did not let Cadell go for nothing,” he said.
Meirigdydd, Tywyllu Wythnos—morning
THE MORNING WAS crisp and cool as Penda emerged from his quarters in Caer Tir. In the cou
rtyard Ellywen sat on a horse, her hands bound to the pommel of the saddle, her face still. For a wonder King Erfin was up early and emerged from the ystafell with a cold smile on his scarred face.
“You are up early, slug,” Ellywen said coldly.
“I wouldn’t miss your leave-taking for the world,” Erfin sneered.
Ellywen leaned down slightly and smiled. “When next I see you Rhoram’s sword will do more damage than last time. His sword will be sticking out of your useless guts.”
Erfin lifted his hand to strike her, but Penda grabbed it in a vise-like grip. “Leave her be, Erfin,” he said sharply.
Ellywen settled back into the saddle, without looking at Penda.
“General,” Erfin began, “I am told you are sending only two guards to escort her to Afalon.”
“That is correct,” Penda said. The fact that the two guards were men that Penda thoroughly disliked was his own business. Ellywen’s lids flickered over her sharp, gray eyes when she heard this but she did not speak.
“Then you are a fool,” Erfin went on. “You know that Cadell has escaped and has no doubt alerted the Cerddorian. They will try to rescue the Druid.”
“I think not,” Penda said his tone bored. “She has betrayed them in the past. Surely King Rhoram would never forgive that.”
“General, my brother-in-law is all kinds of a fool. He has no doubt already forgiven Ellywen. I tell you, he will rescue her.”
He had better, Penda thought.
He was counting on it.
ELLYWEN KEPT HER eyes closed against the blinding light of the sun. Her head throbbed as the poisonous enaid-dal worked its way through her brain, shutting off the pathways to her gift, slowly poisoning her body. She would die in writhing agony, as the rest of the Y Dawnus did when collared. It would be, she thought coldly, no more than she deserved. Her horse lurched beneath her and she forced herself to open her eyes and raise her head.
Her guards lay face down on the road, Kymric arrows fletched in black and green protruding from their backs. Her eyes narrowed to slits and she could barely focus as a slim hand reached out and grabbed the reins of her horse. She caught a glimpse of dark hair, a slender figure clothed in black riding leathers, a wide mouth quirked in a grin as her bonds were cut and she was pulled from her horse.
Someone unbuckled the collar and flung it away. Pillowed against someone’s chest, her head was tipped back and a flask held before her mouth. She swallowed the liquid, knowing that it was a concoction of Penduran’s Rose and cool, clean water, the only cure for one who had worn an enaid-dal, the only way to counteract the poisonous needles.
“Ellywen,” a voice said, a voice that belonged to the man against whose chest her head rested. She thought she recognized that voice, but she couldn’t be sure. Surely he himself would not come and rescue her. Not after what she had done to him.
She squinted up at the man and the sunlight turned his golden hair into a glowing nimbus. His eyes, blue as sapphires, smiled down at her.
“Sire,” Ellywen breathed. “Forgive.”
“I do, my Druid,” Rhoram said with a grin as he helped her to stand. “If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here.”
“Achren,” Ellywen said as she focused on the woman who held the horse’s reins. “Achren, you would not kill me before. I beg you, do it now.”
“For what cause?” Achren asked, her brow raised.
“For my betrayal of our king.”
“Don’t be a fool, Ellywen,” Achren said. “You have atoned for that betrayal.”
“What Achren is trying to say in her inimitable style, is welcome home, Ellywen,” Rhoram said.
His smile warmed her as life returned to her brain and body. “King Rhoram, my life is not long enough to atone. But I will do what I can.”
“You are free, Ellywen,” Rhoram said gently. “Free.”
Free? How could one such as she be free? For she had done such terrible things. “My King, I—”
“Free,” he repeated as the golden morning bathed her in its light. Far above them the sound of a hunting horn drifted across the sky. A meadow dotted with wildflowers stretched out before her. Red rockrose and bright blue forget-me-nots, yellow globeflowers and tall green grasses bowed as though in reverence under a morning breeze that swirled gentle patterns throughout the grass. Nearby a brook capered and sang, spraying tiny drops of diamonds into the morning. Birds sang overhead and grapevines ran and twisted above the dark, rich earth. Apple trees, covered with delicate, pink blossoms spread their branches to the clear, blue sky.
She breathed in gratefully, closing her eyes then opening them again, alive for the first time in many years to the gifts of the earth.
“By Modron the Mother,” Rhoram said softly, “by all the gods in Kymru, Ellywen, you are free.”
Chapter
* * *
Nine
Llwynarth, Kingdom of Rheged &
Cadair Idris, Gwytheryn, Kymru
Bedwen Mis, 500
Meirigdydd, Tywyllu Wythnos—midmorning
Enid ur Urien var Ellirri, Queen of Rheged, made her way through the marketplace in the center of the city of Llwynarth.
The morning was crisp and cool as was usual for early spring. Overhead the sun shone, doing its best to thaw earth still cold from winter’s frosts. A chill breeze swooped through the city, plucking at her cloak, loosening strands of her hair from the gold and opal fillet that bound it and setting the reddish-gold locks to dancing in the sunlight. Fiery opals flashed at her fingers, her wrists, her throat, as though attempting to warm her.
Her fellow Kymri seemed to melt out of her path, as she made her way through the stalls. Behind her two of her husband’s Coranian warriors shadowed her. Later Morcant would make them recite the places she had gone, all that she had said and done and seen. She smiled bitterly, for he would never learn anything from it.
She held her head high as she walked, and the sun illuminated the darkening bruise on her cheekbone. She would not bend her head to hide what King Morcant did to her. She had paid and paid and paid again this past year for her foolishness in ever coming to Llwynarth to be captured and wed against her will. She would not continue to pay the price of shame for what had happened to her. It was her husband that should be ashamed, not she.
When she remembered the girl that she had been when she had first returned to Llwynarth, when she remembered her foolish dream of convincing Bledri, her dead father’s Dewin, to return to the forest with her, when she remembered how desperately she had loved him, grief filled her. That girl she had been would never return. The girl blinded by love, the girl who risked all for it, the girl who lost all because of it, was gone. All freshness, all beauty, all love had gone out of her in that moment Bledri had betrayed her, had laughed at her dreams, had given her to Morcant Whledig.
Yes, Bledri had given her to Morcant, but not before he had raped her as she lay helplessly bound in the dark cells beneath her father’s fortress. He had done that every night for that first week. And then he and Morcant had determined that she would wed the false king to help bolster his claim to the throne of Rheged. And Bledri had stopped the nightly rapes, for Morcant had decided that he must be sure she was not with child by another man before he wed her.
Since then, Morcant alone had raped her. He gloried in trying to humiliate her, in hurting her, in his endless game of trying to make her scream. But she would not. Not even the slightest sound would pass her lips when he did those unspeakable things to her over and over and over again. She would never give him that satisfaction. Never. At least she had the power to deny him that.
She had one other power in her possession—the power to deny him a child. She regularly took small doses of pennyroyal oil, just enough to ensure that there would be no son for Morcant.
Sometimes, late at night, when she lay bruised and bleeding she would think of Prince Geriant of Prydyn, the man who had truly loved her, who had offered for her hand, the man who she might now be married
to if not for her own foolishness. Geriant had been so bright and golden, so true, so loving. But she had turned from him to give her heart to such a creature as Bledri. Even after all this time she could still think of Geriant and weep. But when she did weep, she did it alone, for she would never let either Bledri or Morcant see.
Her blue eyes were cool and alert as she came to a stop at the booth of Menestyr, the cloth merchant. Behind her the two Coranian guards halted. Before she even so much as shared a glance with the merchant the two guards were distracted by a Kymric shepherd and a merchant who had begun arguing in loud voices about the price the merchant should pay for the shepherd’s wool. Menestyr must have been warned in advance of her coming today, to have been able to set up the distraction so quickly.
Menestyr bowed to her behind the counter of his stall. Brightly colored piles of cloth were strewn across the counter’s wooden surface. Thick curtains covered the entrance to the back of the stall, where he kept additional wares. Menestyr straightened and, as he took in her bruised face, his dark eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched.
“It is of no matter, my old friend,” she said, her voice pitched low.
“It is,” the merchant murmured. “But I will not distress you further by insisting on that.”
She smiled bitterly. “I thank you. My time is short. I can tell you only that tonight Morcant, Bledri, and General Baldred plan to dine alone in the King’s ystafell. They have been given orders by the Golden Man to come up with a way to get a message through to the Coranian Empire. Havgan needs Coranian reinforcements and with the shores guarded and his boats burned, he is at his wits end to find a way to get word back to Corania.”
“Can you tell us what this plan will be once it is formulated?”
She shook her head as she fingered some cloth of forest green. “I will be locked in my chambers to await my lord’s pleasure,” she said coldly, almost spitting out the last word. “I won’t be able to even get close enough. Nor would Morcant dream of breathing a word of it to me when he comes.”