Three Wells of the Sea Series Box Set: Three Wells of the Sea and The Salamander's Smile

by Terry Madden

  He heard the door of the cottage slam shut just as Peavey’s car pulled up beside the wheelbarrow.

  With a view of nothing but sky, Dish listened to Peavey open and shut his creaking car door, his footsteps crunching gravel as he approached. Then his square, grizzled face was peering down at Dish.

  “What are you doing in the muck cart, Mr. Cavendish?”

  “My wheelchair broke down. Connor’s gone into town to find a part to repair it.”

  “Oh, I’ll have a look at it for ye—”

  “Not necessary, really. It’s but a small part. Connor will have it fixed up in a jiff.”

  “I thought I saw a young lady go into the house?”

  “My niece. Yes. She arrived last night. I have some rough news, Mr. Peavey. Merryn passed early this morning.”

  The old man turned away and muttered, “Stars and stones.”

  “What was that?” Dish was sure of what he’d heard. ‘Stars and stones’ was a common euphemism in the Five Quarters, but he’d never heard it uttered here.

  “A blessing and a curse at once,” Peavey turned back. But there were questions in his old gray eyes. “And Connor was with her, eh?”

  “Yes. Connor arrived in time.”

  “And lucky your niece was here as well. I thought your sister had only boys,” Peavey pointed out.

  “She’s the daughter of a close friend. As much a niece to me as she can be, really.”

  “Oh, aye. And your sister? She was here for the passing?” Peavey pushed his cap back, and beads of rainwater fell on Dish.

  Oh Christ, Bronwyn. Dish hadn’t called her immediately. How could he explain that? “She’s on her way,” he told Peavey.

  “I see.” Peavey pulled his cap lower over his forehead, his eyes fogged with tears as he gazed out over the flock. “Can I roll ye somewhere more comfortable, sir?”

  “No, no. Elowen will be back for me presently.”

  “But you’re sittin’ in the rain, sir.”

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “So ‘tis. Sir, with your aunt Merryn gone, there are some words I must have with ye.”

  “I understand if you can’t stay on—”

  “That’s not it, sir. Can we talk?”

  “Can we talk later? I really must see to Bronwyn who will be here any moment. But we shall. Perhaps tonight.”

  “Certainly, sir.” He tipped his cap.

  “Thank you, Mr. Peavey.”

  Gripping the edges of the wheelbarrow, Dish hoisted himself so he could just see out. He glanced toward the cottage and saw Elowen’s face flash from behind the lace curtains like a dog waiting for its owner to return. Dish waved Elowen to him.

  When she reached him, she needed no instruction. She picked up the cart handles and headed for the cottage, threatening to tip the wheelbarrow in her haste. Dish pulled his hands in from the edge of the bucket as she rolled him up the plywood ramp that covered the front steps and slowly eased him through the door jamb, scraping both sides as she did.

  Once inside, she slammed the door. Her face crossed his field of view as she paced, a vibrant glow set against the dingy ceiling. She was raving about the Sunless, about the Crooked One who was imprisoned in the cromm cruach.

  “Can you get me out of this thing?” he begged her.

  Dish had come to know the true meaning of helplessness, but when Elowen poured him out onto the sofa in a fall of wet dung, he thought he’d reached a new low.

  He tried to explain what had happened here, how Lyleth and Merryn were druada of the Old Blood, how Connor had been conscripted to help Merryn cross over by planting the tree, all while Elowen cleaned up the mess of sheep dung. Then he called Bronwyn, formulating another lie about why it had taken him so long to do so.

  In the short space of time before Bronwyn arrived, Elowen filled in the blanks. She recounted everything that had happened from the day Talan had arrived at the Isle of Glass until he strangled her in the Red Bog. As she talked, she wandered the small cottage, flipping the light switches on and off in every room, standing in front of the fridge and staring inside. But she withheld her questions, clearly knowing that relating her story was more important than exploring the magic of the dead.

  She summarized her story with finality, looking Dish right in the eye. “Talan is trying to set the Crooked One free.”

  Dish knew the stories as well as anyone from the Five Quarters. The Crooked One was a fairytale monster, a bogeyman, part of the folklore of the land, nothing more. But it appeared the thing that distressed Elowen most was that Angharad was helping him. The child had stood by placidly while he’d strangled Elowen.

  “But she put the moth in your mouth,” Dish reminded her. “So she did do something.”

  When Bronwyn’s car pulled into the drive, he sent Elowen to hide in the bedroom closet.

  Bronwyn burst into the cottage and encased Dish in a weepy hug, oblivious to the fact that he was soaking wet and smelled of sheep dung.

  “My god, Hugh, why didn’t you call me?”

  “I’m sorry, Wyn. I—I needed to take care of the body, and the inspector was here, and it was awful, just awful.”

  In that moment, he came close to telling Bronwyn everything. She deserved the truth. But he realized the truth he knew was nothing more than a glimpse of what was really going on. Blood magic and sacrifice and Angharad’s little moth. How could he explain something he didn’t understand himself? And if Elowen was right, and Talan was trying to awaken the Crooked One, Connor might find himself right in the thick of it.

  “Why are you soaking wet, Hugh?” Bronwyn was staring at him, waiting for a response to a question she must have repeated. “And you smell like you’ve been in with the sheep.”

  “Huh? Oh. I was caught out in the rain. Connor took me for a walk, I needed the air.”

  He pushed his wheelchair to the sofa where Bronwyn sat. He took her hands in his as she rambled on about funeral arrangements. But Dish could only think of how he might find a way to conjure such a moth again. If Connor could cross, Dish could cross. Someone needed to stop Talan.

  “Where is Connor?”

  The lies were coming too easily now, and that distressed him. “I sent him on an errand. He’ll be back soon.”

  Chapter 10

  Dusk was deepening, the threshold passing, that moment when day and night, living and dead, meet and touch. Lyleth dropped her bow and drew her knife. An arrow might miss him or hit Angharad, but not a knife. Talan was on his knees beside the pool surrounding the cromm cruach, and Angharad’s hand rested reassuringly on his shoulder. She could reach him if she ran. He’d be dead before his guards knew what happened. She had taken one step when Nesta dragged her back behind the standing stone, a hand clamped over Lyleth’s mouth.

  “It’ll do no good to get caught now,” Nesta whispered. “We must go from this place.”

  Lyleth gave her a forceful shove back toward the bog. “Go, then,” Lyleth told her. “Just go!”

  “So be it. But if you die, what will become of your child?” With a long look over her shoulder, the Brehon waded back into the cattails and was gone.

  Lyleth strained through the gathering darkness to see Talan and Angharad at the center of the island. Elowen was gone, vanished beneath the pool, and Angharad stood silently by while Talan waded in. He swam across the pool to the cromm cruach, and reached his arms around the bulbous stone in a pathetic embrace. He stroked it, chanting something in what sounded like the tongue of the Old Blood. Then she caught a few words as he circled. The words of waking stone. The same words Lyleth had used to raise Nechtan.

  Talan had sacrificed Elowen, hoping to free the god with the words of waking stone. But he had failed. He swam three circles widdershins round it, then paused, his arms spread wide as if in total surrender. Then he loosed a cry that resounded across the bog, scattering birds from their evening roost and echoing between the twelve Knights of Stone. He beat on it with his fists, cursed it, cajoled it and wept great so
bs.

  “None but he can set me free,” he cried. “Set me free, damn you!”

  Dylan had roused and cried out from where he lay in the mud, “Murderer! Bloody bastard! I’ll kill you myself!”

  Talan climbed from the pool and strode over to where Dylan lay and kicked him in the face. Taking a sword from a soldier, he raised it up, uttering again the words of waking stone, the madness in his eyes visible from where Lyleth hid. Talan buried the blade in Dylan’s back, then yanked it free and headed back to the pool of the cromm cruach.

  Lyleth bit the back of her hand, stifling her own cries.

  Once across the water, Talan hammered the pommel of the sword against the stone as if he could break it open. He wept and wailed and cursed and pleaded.

  And all the while, Angharad stood at the water’s edge, her hands clasped, silent as a tree. She’d watched him murder Elowen, and made no cry of protest when he stabbed Dylan. Would he kill her next? Hot tears blurred Lyleth’s view. The instinct to cross the ground to Angharad, scoop her up, and run was all she could think of. Until Angharad looked over her shoulder and cast a look that rooted her in place.

  Angharad knew she was there.

  **

  Lyleth sat with her back pressed to the stone, peering out intermittently to keep her eye on the guard that circled the island on his watch. Talan, still raving, had yet to climb out of the pool. Nesta was right. Even if she had a clear shot at him, the guards would kill her before she could flee. What would become of Angharad then?

  If she was lucky, she thought, he would drown in the pool. Then she could make her move.

  Several of the guards had fallen asleep, their backs to one another or leaning against a standing stone. Lyleth slid into the cattails every time the guard came around, and now she shivered with the wet cold. A crescent moon was rising when Talan finally stumbled from the pool. He roused the guards, and they prepared to cross the bog in the darkness. Lyleth watched as Angharad climbed on Talan’s back like a child taking a ride from her father, then he waded into the bog, and they were gone.

  Lyleth’s heart threatened to burst with pain.

  She wanted to follow, but not without seeing to Dylan. How many men had she carried from the battlefield and healed from such wounds?

  Once she was certain Talan and his companions were far from the island, she crept from behind the stone and made her way to where Dylan lay, several paces from the Crooked One’s pool.

  Moonlight glanced from the rippling surface of the water, yet there was no wind. It was as if Talan still moved it with his thrashing. But that wasn’t it. Something moved beneath it. The stone itself was wet and glistened in the silvery light. It moved, too. The surface of stone wriggled. She forced herself to move closer until she stood at the water’s edge. It wasn’t water on the stone, but pale worms. The stone was extruding wriggling creatures. Worms, insects that shook water from their wings and took flight—dragonflies, grasshoppers, blowflies, all crawling from the stone, taking wing, or dropping into the water.

  She backed away, and when she looked at her feet, snakes slithered past, all moving outward from the pool of the Crooked One. Their skin was translucent as larvae as they headed for the bog. She would see to Dylan and leave this place as quickly as possible.

  She found a faint pulse fluttering in Dylan and set to work cutting his tunic away. She hated herself for the overwhelming desire to flee this haunted place. She would do everything she could for him and hope that Talan’s tracks were easy to follow in the morning. The king and his companions had crossed the bog to the south. This could only mean they had no intention of returning to Caer Ys, at least not yet. South and west of here lay Caer Emlyn, Fiach’s fortress. What could Talan want with Fiach?

  Even though it was night, black flies converged on Dylan’s exposed skin, forcing her to cover him with her cloak while she probed the wound. She could see little by moonlight, and the rushlights in her rucksack were completely soaked. From what she could tell, Talan’s blade had slid between the ribs, likely puncturing his right lung. If it had pierced his liver, there may be nothing she could do. It was hard to say how much blood he’d lost inside, let alone how much had mixed with the muddy turf beneath him. His nose was broken, and one side of his face was dark with a bruise.

  She made him as comfortable as she could on the driest ground she could find. Her cloak would protect him from every kind of flying insect while she searched by moonlight for anything that might help to staunch the blood flow.

  Sphagnum moss and bog willow grew in abundance. But better than moss was the down-like pollen of cattails. She was forced to beat clouds of insects away to collect it. Once gathered, she pared the fluff from the stalks. This she would use to pack the wound and stop the external bleeding.

  As she worked, her mind wound back to Nesta. She’d been sent by the High Brehon because he suspected that Lyleth was the one who would try to free the Crooked One. What would Nesta report to him now? That his king, the king who’d brought peace through terror and wealth to all, his golden king had come to the Red Bog and murdered an innocent young woman, had offered his own body as a vessel of the Crooked One. Lyleth could only hope that the High Brehon would act on it. There was little chance that the woodsman Lyleth had hired would be carrying her message to Pyrs, not after Nesta had finished with him.

  Whether the judges turned a blind eye on Talan’s depravity or not, Lyleth would see to it justice was done. Not only had Talan murdered members of her hive, now he’d murdered two hearts most dear to her. But Dylan would not die. Not if Lyleth kept his heart beating.

  As the moon climbed across a clear black sky, she shivered in her wet clothes and listened to Dylan’s ragged breathing as she pressed close to him for warmth. She beat at clouds of grasshoppers and flicked snakes away with a stick. But she never took her eyes from the cromm cruach, watching with the Knights of the Stoney Ring that cast long moon shadows across the small island.

  She reflected on Angharad’s placid acceptance of Elowen’s murder. How could it be? She couldn’t help but wonder whether Angharad’s birth had not been designed by the green gods as she had thought, but was instead a child of the Crooked One. Child of Death. Had Lyleth birthed and raised a priestess of the Sunless?

  She rejected the idea as soon as it presented itself. The look in Angharad’s eyes when she looked directly at Lyleth… there was an explanation to be heard. Maybe Lyleth would live long enough to hear it.

  Waiting for dawn, she marked the night with frequent tears and quieted them with singing.

  **

  First light brought little more than the warming of a misty sky. The sun tried to burn through the gray bog mist that blanketed the stone circle, and swarms of midges, biting flies and locusts clouded the air. Lyleth thought she could hear the swarms chewing the foliage. She would have to try to move Dylan, or they would both die in the Red Bog. She closed her eyes to face the sun, feeling the particles of light prick her skin with happy needles of warmth.

  “Lyl,” Dylan whispered.

  She offered him water, which he drank greedily and stared out at the pool of the cromm.

  “There.” He pointed.

  The Knights loomed, partially obscured by the bog mist that drifted past, creating the illusion that the stones moved. Something caught her eye behind one of the stones, something had truly moved.

  Lyleth bolted upright, her hand on her bow.

  There, on the far side of the pool, a pony materialized from the fog. It trotted to the water’s edge and began pacing the shoreline.

  Lyleth got to her feet. As she approached, she confirmed what she suspected. It was Brixia. It had to be. In fact, a few red ribbons were still tangled in her thick mane from six years earlier. But how could it be? The little horse had been following Elowen when they’d met the vagabond child that day in the Felgarth mountains. But Brixia was no horse. That day on the battlefield, when Lyleth called the sea… Brixia was a water horse.

  Brixia p
awed at the mud at the edge of the pool and trotted around to repeat the action on the other side. She was trying to tell Lyleth something. But what?

  Dylan coughed.

  He reached a quaking hand out to point at Brixia and struggled to say, “Elowen’s pony.”

  Lyleth approached the little horse slowly, cooing, “It’s all right. We’re friends. What troubles you, sister?”

  When she reached the pony, she laid her hand on her silky neck and followed her gaze into the water. What was it she saw in the depths? Something pale glowed under the brackish water. It had the vague shape of a person. Was it Elowen? Did Brixia want her to bring the poor girl’s body up?

  Lyleth stepped in. The water was icy. She glanced at the pony for direction and Brixia pawed at the water.

  If Lyleth could swim down and reach her, perhaps she could bring Elowen back up. An impossible hope filled her heart. Could she still be alive somehow?

  The icy water provided a relief from the biting bugs, and she convinced herself to get it over with swiftly. After filling her lungs with air, she dove under.

  The water stung her eyes as she strained to see what the white image was. As she drew closer, the perfect sculpture of a man became clear, half-buried in the muck, his stone arm reaching up as if to the sky. When she touched the chiseled hand, the rough, cold stone became flesh and clutched hers. Her breath escaped with her scream in a cloud of bubbles.

  She pried the fingers off and swam for the surface, gulping air. But the hand grabbed her bare foot and pulled her under again. Her fists beat against stone that softened under her blows. Flesh, not stone.

  She struggled free and made for the edge of the pool. Vomiting water, she turned to see the pool seethe and churn. Whatever was under there was trying to swim up.

  “What’s happening?” Dylan’s voice was weak and fearful.

  “Someone’s there.”

  “Elowen?”

  No, not Elowen, she thought.

  On her hands and knees, Lyleth looked back at the water, bubbles surfacing. It was drowning, whatever it was. She had decided to let it do just that, when a pale green moth surfaced, struggled against the water and took wing. A creature of the green gods. Brixia whinnied and began galloping back and forth along the shore.