The Pendragon's Champions (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 5)

by Sarah Woodbury

  “They did,” Taliesin said. “But they also found caves to their liking. Our power comes from the earth, and the deeper within it we go, the greater the power we can wield.”

  Taliesin had once explained to Cade how he drew his strength from the natural world. The magic flowed like a waterfall through him, though rising upward, not down. Much of Taliesin’s youth had been spent learning to control it, rather than let random acts of magic burst from his fingertips, or even from the top of his head. Cade thought about that for a moment, wondering if it gave him some insight into what had happened in Arawn’s cavern, or about the source of the shadow’s power. Then he dismissed his musings as something he wasn’t ever going to understand.

  Taliesin continued speaking. “As with your Christians after them, the druids found themselves forced underground at times when the Romans got too close.” He shot Cade a look, then, and it was one of resentment, before his face cleared and the gentle expression he usually wore reappeared. “But unlike your Christians, my kind has all but disappeared.”

  “I can see why if the only place you can worship is this difficult to find,” Cade said, trying to lighten the mood.

  Taliesin obliged with a smile, but it didn’t rise to his eyes, and Cade resolved to keep to the business at hand.

  Faded paintings adorned the walls, depicting scenes with trees and men—perhaps the sacred groves on Anglesey which the Romans had destroyed. Water gurgled from a spring in the distance, close to the far wall. The last druids to come here had set five sconces in the walls, with torches already prepared to light the room, and had etched a star with five points in the smooth stone of the floor. An altar sat in the precise center of the star. And in its center, in the place of honor, rested a nearly flat wooden bowl.

  “What do you need from me?” Cade said.

  “If you would light the torches first and then fill this with water from the spring, I will prepare myself.” Taliesin pulled a small wooden bowl from his satchel and handed it to Cade.

  With a last glance at Taliesin, Cade set to work. He had the torches flaming with a few strikes of flint and was able to slide Caledfwlch into its sheath as he no longer needed its light. Taliesin had already leaned his own staff against the wall beside the doorway through which they’d entered the cavern. In the farthest reaches of the cave, the spring welled up into a hole in the rocky floor. It bubbled merrily, a counterpoint to the intense and ominous atmosphere bearing down on Cade. Despite his growing concerns about this entire endeavor, Cade brought the full bowl back to Taliesin and set it carefully on the table in front of him.

  Taliesin waved Cade away and focused on the bowl. “You are here to rescue me if I can’t save myself. If all goes well, a way to defeat what we face will appear to me from within the sacred vessel and renew my sight at the same time. This might take some time, or if the gods have forgiven me, my vision might return to me in a powerful rush. Regardless, do not let me touch the water.”

  “All right,” Cade said, not understanding, but deciding he didn’t need to in this instance—and perhaps didn’t want to. He moved to lean against the wall next to Taliesin’s staff.

  Taliesin poured the water from the small bowl into the larger one before stowing the smaller one again in his pack. Then he pulled his belt knife from his sheath, held up both hands as if in prayer, and with the knife sliced through the fat portion of his left hand below his thumb. He began to speak out loud, but in words Cade didn’t understand. The drops of blood dripped one, two, three, four, five into the water in front of him. After stuffing a cloth into his fist to stop the flow, Taliesin leaned forward to stare over the bowl, still chanting in that unknown tongue.

  Cade watched him for a while, but then he began to fidget. He loosened his shoulders. He crossed and re-crossed his ankles. It had never occurred to him that this would take so long or that Taliesin’s magic could be so boring. Still, Taliesin continued to chant. Then Cade realized that Taliesin’s voice was growing louder, echoing with a growing cacophony off the walls. The volume increased moment by moment until Cade wanted to clap his hands over his ears to shut out the sound.

  The fire in the torches dimmed, flared, and then dimmed again. A wind began to blow, circling around Taliesin, who only leaned ever more forward over the bowl. Cade was trying to pay attention to everything at once: the wind, the torches, the horrible, overwhelming sound, and then a growing darkness that seemed to rise out of the stones at their feet like a fog rolling onto the beach from the sea or over a mountain meadow. It welled up so quickly, Cade feared it would obscure Taliesin from his sight, and he took a step forward, afraid for his friend.

  Taliesin had closed his eyes, and his pointy nose was within a hair’s-breadth of the water. Cade took another step towards him, watching him intently. He was holding still, however, and Cade was loath to disrupt him before he’d finished his work. Cade stood, feet spread and braced against the screaming wind, while Taliesin’s chanting continued to fill the room. Cade could barely stay on his feet.

  “Boom!” The torches exploded in their sconces, throwing flames in all directions, and the walls themselves caught fire, for all that they were made of stone. Cade knew it wasn’t possible, but he’d seen the impossible before and had been forced to accept it. He could accept this—and ignore it—because it was a small matter compared to saving Taliesin. Cade leapt toward the center of the room, grasped Taliesin around the waist, and pulled him away from the bowl.

  Cade feared Taliesin might fight him, but instead he collapsed the instant his connection to the bowl was broken. The bard was so tall, Cade nearly overbalanced at the sudden shift in weight. As Cade straightened, adjusting Taliesin in his arms, a dark shape, thicker than the fog on the floor, rose from the water in the bowl. It had no more form than a cloud or a trail of smoke, but as Cade watched, transfixed, it took the form of a man, hooded and cloaked.

  The being grew larger, rising to the ceiling of the room, and then the wind of before began whirling around the creature instead of Taliesin, accompanied by a rumbling and shaking that cascaded a pile of stones at the far end of the room to the floor. The water from the little brook shot upwards in a geyser, soaking the stone around the hole.

  If he’d had breath, it would have been coming fast and hard. As it was, Cade staggered backwards with his burden, and then because he feared he wouldn’t be able to flee the shadow in time, bent and threw Taliesin over his left shoulder. The bard hung boneless. The shaking continued, along with the wind which had become a piercing shriek. Cade grabbed Taliesin’s staff and held it out, as if that might help ward off the evil force. Then, as the shadow loomed larger above him, he fled.

  As soon as he crossed the threshold into the tunnel, the fire behind him went out, as if extinguished in one mighty breath. But who—or what—had done the breathing, Cade didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He ran up the passageway. Trying not to stumble in the total darkness, Cade mumbled the words to conjure the light at the end of Taliesin’s staff, words that he’d heard Taliesin say so many times: caith solas ar. Cade didn’t expect it to work, but despite his lack of faith, the staff lit.

  The shadow dogged his heels. Only the little light on the end of Taliesin’s staff kept Cade from being consumed by it. The journey upwards seemed to take four times longer than the one down to the cavern, but just when Cade thought he must have turned the wrong way in that initial darkness, he reached the chamber that held the Christian bones. Once he entered that room, the mountain began to shake even harder.

  Cade’s legs trembled with every step, not because he was afraid (though he was), but because the stones were giving way beneath his feet. The earth’s motion catapulted the bones out of their resting places one by one. A skull hit Cade in the head and he raised the arm that held Taliesin’s staff, prepared to defend himself and Taliesin against all the forces that might come against them, even the bones. Meanwhile, the man who lay on the table in the center of the room remained as he had been, undisturbed. B
ut as Cade passed the table at a wobbling run, a tremor shook the wooden box, and it fell to the floor.

  Terrified that its contents had broken, Cade swung around in time to see the precious cup roll out of its protective cloth and right itself in the center of the room. The shaking grew stronger still, and the cup rocked on its base, but it didn’t tip. Even though Cade didn’t want to leave the room and its unattended cup, he retreated, backing through the far doorway into the passage beyond, which would take them back up to Dinas Bran.

  The instant his left foot sought for purchase on the uneven stones in the entryway, the black shadow arrived in the far doorway opposite him and surged forward. Cade opened his mouth in a silent scream, knowing that he needed to turn and run but unable to move. But when the shadow reached the spot where the cup rested, it drew up short. The shrieking wind grew louder and the blackness loomed from floor to ceiling in the back half of the room, yet it was as if an invisible wall prevented it from continuing.

  The being fell backwards, like a wave crashing against a cliff wall and then retreating, and disappeared from the room. Thinking the threat had ended, Cade took a step towards the cup on the floor. He wanted to return it to its box. Before he could take another step, however, the blackness filled the doorway again and thrust towards him. Fear shaped in darkness and threat filled his ears in a wild shriek, but another appeal pushed it away.

  Run!

  Cade ran, Taliesin bobbing on his back like a sack of turnips, and he took the stairs three at a time. When he was a step from the top, a great crashing of rock sounded behind him, and he allowed himself one glance back. A mountain of stone that even he might have trouble penetrating blocked the doorway to the tomb.

  The farther he ran from the hidden chambers, the quieter the rumblings, until he reached the last cave, below the castle’s cellar. Cade entered the chamber warily but was met with silence.

  “Geraint!” Cade tilted his head towards the opening in the cellar floor.

  A heartbeat later, the familiar face appeared above him, reminding Cade of why he trusted Geraint with his life. Geraint didn’t ask questions, just reached through the hole for Taliesin, then his staff, and finally Cade, who boosted himself onto his stomach in the opening, and rolled onto his back on the cool stones of the cellar floor.

  Geraint crouched over Taliesin, his ear to his chest. “He lives.”

  “I’d hoped as much.” Cade didn’t move. It wasn’t so much that he was tired, but that he was mentally spent.

  “He does live.” Taliesin’s voice cracked over the words.

  Cade sat up and crawled the few feet that separated him from Taliesin, whose eyes revealed an inwardness that marked him as someone who’d lived through what no man should ever have had to see. “Can you tell us what you saw in the water?”

  “What supports the world that it lies not in waste around us?

  And if the world should fail, on what would it fall?

  Who will uphold it when it descends into decay?

  Again the circle closes.”

  The words meant nothing to Cade, and Taliesin didn’t explain them. Instead, he answered Cade’s question. “I saw the long cloud of war. It’s a black shadow that will cover the land from mountain to sea.”

  “I saw a shadow too.” Cade studied Taliesin’s face. “The shadow, I think. It rose up from the water and followed us as I fled with you.”

  Taliesin’s jaw clenched. “What happened to it?”

  “It never left the room with the Christian bones,” Cade said, not ready to speak of all that he’d seen. Not just yet.

  Taliesin closed his eyes and his muscles relaxed, the lines on his face smoothing to that of a youth. “I remember nothing of what happened, other than my visions. I suppose it isn’t too much of a stretch to think that you saved my life?”

  “You told me not to let you touch the water,” Cade said. “So I didn’t.”

  “I do remember wind and fire,” Taliesin said.

  “The mountain shook around me, much as it did when Rhun and I searched for traces of those demons at Deganwy,” Cade said. “Rocks fell behind me as I ran. They collapsed in front of the ossuary door. They didn’t stop until I reached the fort and found it calm.”

  “I felt no rumbling,” Geraint said. “All was quiet here.”

  Taliesin pushed up onto one elbow. “Then perhaps we still have time. Whether the gods have blessed me with the renewed gift of foresight, or it is only a temporary thing, I feel the weight of my gift pressing on me, like a great ache behind my eyes.” He took Cade’s shoulder in one hand and shook him slightly, so urgent was his warning. “The gods themselves have taken sides in the coming battle.”

  “Mabon,” Geraint said. “And Camulos.”

  “And Arianrhod, and Arawn, and Llyr, and Gofannon, and even my own patron, Gwydion,” Taliesin said. “All are arrayed in the unseen world, with their ancient grudges and shifting allegiances. We face the Saxons, yes, but I fear more than they, we fight our own selves and contest the essence of what it means to be Welsh.”

  Cade scrubbed his face with his hands. “Let’s get you up. We can continue this discussion after you’ve rested.”

  “I will never rest again,” Taliesin said, “though I close my eyes in sleep.”

  “I will speak with the lords of Powys, Ceredigion and Gwent,” Cade said. “I will force them to listen.”

  “And meanwhile, we’ll find out what the Saxons are up to,” Geraint said, doing a good imitation of Bedwyr’s growl. “We will find them, and meet them, and let that be an end to it.”

  Chapter Two

  Dafydd

  Every fort Dafydd had ever encountered invariably claimed the highest ground of the region in which it sat, even if the only elevation available was a knee-high hill. The seat of King Clydog of Ceredigion, however, crouched in the bend of a meandering river. It was in the middle—as far as Dafydd could tell—of nowhere. The king did seem to have made an effort to protect his fort with a system of surrounding ditches and palisades. Still, an enemy could approach from every side, even the river, which was hardly more than a creek where Dafydd’s horse, Llelo, splashed through it.

  As ruler of Ceredigion for the last twenty-five years, Clydog would have known Cade’s father. Dafydd hoped that meant he’d give Dafydd himself a positive reception. Rhiann’s father, Cadfael, had been a usurper, which no king with sons could countenance. Perhaps it was that sentiment, expressed by men such as Clydog, that had prevented Cadfael from achieving the much coveted station of High King.

  Thwt! An arrow appeared in the ground at Dafydd’s feet, and he reined in. For all that Dafydd didn’t think much of Clydog’s fortifications, his men were certainly on alert.

  “Who goes there?”

  Dafydd gazed up at the man-at-arms, a bit stunned since one man, even a knight such as he, could hardly be a threat to the castle. “I am Dafydd ap Cynin, from Ynys Manaw—the Isle of Man—and Gwynedd.”

  “Whom do you serve?”

  The man who glared down at him couldn’t have been any older than Dafydd himself, but was affecting a glare that would have done credit to a man thirty years older. Dafydd saw too that the man-at-arms sported a sparse beard that hardly deserved the name. Dafydd’s own growth flourished, and he smoothed it along his chin with one hand. “My lord is Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon, the King of Gwynedd.”

  The man canted his head in acknowledgement of the legitimacy of that allegiance. Or at least that was what Dafydd hoped.

  “You may enter,” the guard said.

  A moment later, the great double doors to the fort opened outward, and Dafydd urged his horse between them. He entered into a courtyard that was as unusual as the fort itself. For starters, a fountain bubbled in the center of it, splashing water into a large basin. It was the fort’s water supply, evidenced by the serving wench who filled a bucket from it.

  Rather than packed earth, stone had been laid in pathways leading from the gatehouse to the fountain, circling i
t, and then to the great hall. Dafydd dismounted, wondering at the beauty of it. While a stable boy ran to take Llelo and lead him away, Dafydd followed the stones to the front door. The hall itself was built of local stone on cobble foundations though the upper story was timber-framed and plastered.

  “Welcome,” King Clydog said after his guards had done a quick count and inspection of Dafydd’s weapons. They didn’t take them from him, but they’d catalogued his bow, arrows, sword, and three knives: one at his belt, another in his boot, and a third one, much smaller, tucked into his left bracer.

  Dafydd bowed. “I come to you from King Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon of Gwynedd. He is seeking your council and support.”

  “And the use of my men, no doubt.” Clydog lifted his chin. “King, eh? What happened to Cadfael. Did Cadwaladr skewer the old bastard?”

  “Uh … no, my lord.” Dafydd found himself stammering under Clydog’s gaze. He also had an accent that Dafydd hadn’t heard before, and Dafydd was having trouble piecing together the man’s sentences. “Gwynedd has experienced some…uh…treachery and upheaval of late.”

  “So how’d the old bastard die?”

  “Teregad of Caer Dathyl killed Cadfael. King Cadwaladr heard it from the man’s own lips. Teregad has since been deposed, and his younger brother Siawn rules in Arfon.”

  “Old Iaen finally stepped aside, eh?” Clydog said.

  Again Dafydd blinked. “I apologize, my lord, but again that isn’t correct. I’m sorry to inform you that before Teregad killed Cadfael he murdered his father.”

  “Never say it!” Clydog surged to his feet. “Iaen was my friend!”

  Dafydd bowed, sorry to have been the one to tell him.

  Clydog subsided, a finger to his chin, studying Dafydd. Dafydd kept his head slightly bent to the floor, though he still managed to peer at Clydog.