by Terry Madden
This was not exactly the introduction to his entanglements that Dish would have liked to offer his sister, but he carried on with the explanation.
He began, “Do you remember that well Connor found on the beach in Malibu six years ago?”
Iris served up a stiff cup of tea, and Bronwyn’s hands trembled as she listened to the whole story, from the auto accident in California to Dish’s waking in the Five Quarters, the war, the death, and now Connor’s disappearance and Elowen’s arrival. He failed to mention Angharad. She didn’t need to know about her just yet.
Dish concluded the confession with, “Merryn’s stories weren’t all fairytales, Wyn.”
“And Merryn believes she’s going back to that, that fairy land through the roots of a tree?”
“I think that’s safe to say.”
“And Inspector Trewin believes you murdered Connor.”
She was right. And the thought shook Dish to the core. What if Connor never found his way back. The circumstantial evidence might indeed point to Dish’s involvement in his disappearance. And yet, if the well were to open soon… then Connor may return, or Dish may cross over himself. Either way, Trewin’s search of the shed had failed to turn up Connor’s belongings, and Dish had no explanation for that.
“Without evidence,” Dish replied, “I can’t be charged.”
A knock sounded at the door once again, and Dish’s heart raced. “Bloody hell,” he whispered.
“Let me get it,” Iris said.
She opened the door to Mr. Peavey, standing there with Connor’s rucksack in his hands, saying, “We must find a better place for the American’s things.”
Chapter 19
Fiach was standing just outside the door of Talan’s quarters, demanding entrance. Demand. Who did he think he was? Talan had thrown the bolt, and unless Fiach planned to take an axe to the door, Talan would interrogate the man from the land of the dead alone. Well, alone but for the odd-eyed green sister who had pledged her skills and wisdom to the Sunless. Talan thought the little man was a fool to trust her, and he could only hope that she would be his undoing.
Nesta was her name. She was fingering her necklace of claws, her mismatched eyes flitting about as she stood by the window, alternately gazing out at the assembled army of Ys beyond the city walls, and scrutinizing the strange man who stood in the center of the room, claiming to have come from the land of the dead.
Talan had ordered the man’s hands be tied behind his back, or the little man had, for he was at the helm of this body now. Talan just carried out orders like a groveling servant.
He was indeed of strange pallor. Talan paced around him. The clay-like appearance might have been produced by a thin coating of mud, and his claim to have been sent by Nechtan mere deception. But why?
Talan examined him from all sides. A big man, broad of shoulder and thick in the arms, like a warrior. Talan examined his hands. No callouses. Not a warrior, not a laborer. What then? A green man?
He wore a rusty old sword, and what was that tucked into his belt? Talan withdrew the stub of a green stone blade no longer than his middle finger. The edge was fine and clear and sharp.
“What is this?”
“A stone blade,” the gray man said. His name was Connor Quinn. “Made by ancient natives of my own world.”
“Your world? The land of the dead? Where Nechtan reigns?” What was this man after with this pretense? There was only one way to find out.
“Take off his clothes,” Talan ordered Nesta.
With a smile, she obliged. She untied his trousers and dropped them, then lifted the tunic over his head so it knotted behind his neck and caught on his bound wrists.
“Everything is gray, my lord,” she said.
It was clear he was gray most certainly, even his balls and the soles of his feet. Everything but those unsettling copper eyes. Talan poured a cup of mead over his shoulder and wiped at it. Nothing came away on the cloth. What kind of magic was this?
“May I get dressed?” he asked.
Talan nodded, and Nesta obliged, taking her time with it.
“Do you command an army, Connor Quinn?” the little man asked. And Talan suddenly hoped that perhaps Nechtan did indeed intend to send an army. An army of the dead. One that might free him of this usurping bastard. If he could but get a message to Connor and then to Nechtan, tell him that it wasn’t Talan who killed Nechtan, but the little man. But how?
“No,” the gray man said. “I came alone.”
Damn.
“Does Nechtan send you to reclaim his throne?”
He shook his head. “No, lord.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Nechtan bears you no ill will,” Connor said at last.
“Then why does he send you?” The question came from Nesta. “Or is the truth that you’ve not come from Nechtan at all, but you were sent by someone else? Or sent by no one?”
At last Connor seemed to find his voice. “Nechtan knows the Crooked One stirs.” He clearly chose his words with care, his eyes flitting to Nesta. “He knows the Sunless prepare to cross the third well and reenter this world.”
“And he plans to stop it, I gather?” the little man said with a laugh.
“Nechtan fears the Crooked One will use you, then cast you aside and bring his land to ruin.”
“The old god is restless,” Nesta said. She stood directly in front of Connor, gazing intently into those strange eyes, her hands on his cheeks. She was reading him, as the druada do.
Talan pushed her aside.
“Nechtan plans to cross with the Old Blood, does he not?” It was Talan speaking now, not the little man. He had his hands around his tongue, at least for a few moments. He clutched at Connor, whispered into his ear, “Nechtan must help me, don’t you see? You must help me.”
But it was too late.
The stirring inside was like a nest of snakes. The little man pulled the garrote tighter, and Talan choked, losing his control of the body’s tongue. Immobile behind his eyes, Talan was forced to watch as the little man clutched at the short stone blade. Before Talan could close his eyes, he’d raised it high and thrust it downward, stabbing at the gray man.
Connor cried out and fell away from the blade, but it caught his arm just above the elbow. His blood was as crimson as any man’s.
“Speak truth!” The little man croaked from Talan’s throat. “Nechtan conspires with the exiles. With the Old Blood.”
Connor rolled away. “No,” he cried. “He conspires with no one!”
“You lie!”
With knife raised once again, Talan lurched at Connor, but Nesta stepped between them.
“Stop!” she demanded. “This man is more important than you understand. He could be of great use.”
But as she spoke, Fiach’s guards splintered the locked door and burst into the room.
The green blade in Talan’s hand fell to the floor.
“This man is my guest,” Fiach said, kneeling beside Connor. “He’s under my protection.”
“As am I,” Talan said.
**
Darkness was falling when Nesta slipped into Talan’s bed. Her hands were warm as she stroked his limp serpent to wakefulness. The little man had been denied such pleasures in life, and now he took them with every opportunity. If Talan could squeeze the little man out with his seed and plant him in this woman, he might be free. And so he tried. And when she could no longer coax life from his cock, she slept. Perhaps if Talan cut it off, the little man would leave, his toy taken from him. He vowed to try it in the morning.
“You drained the bog?” he asked Nesta, rousing her from sleep.
“Aye, my lord.”
“And does he stir inside his stone?”
“So, he does. He waits for you to call him. Now he is free of the water chains that surrounded him.” She rested upon his chest, and he must have slept, for Angharad’s sleep potion demanded it.
It was late when Talan felt Nesta slip from his bed
. He rolled over into the warmth of her place, for he could make no warmth himself. He was cold as a corpse. It wasn’t long before she returned. He felt her breasts pressing against his back, warm and firm. But the room was in darkness. He despised the darkness. It choked him.
“Light a rush,” he said to her. “’Tis dark.”
But her hands were on his back, a leg slid over his and she pushed him to his belly and straddled him, kneading his shoulders.
“I said, light a rush.”
“I like the darkness,” she whispered, her fingers knotted in his hair. The voice was not Nesta’s, yet it was a voice he knew well.
He struggled to roll over, to perhaps see her in the dim light. But she held him down with force, stuffing his face into the pillow. “Nechtan has a message for you, my lord.”
She yanked his head back by his hair, and he felt the sharp sting of a blade at his throat.
He struggled to say, “You can’t kill what’s already dead.”
“My followers on the Isle of Glass should know.”
The laughter came out of him in great spurts. It was Lyleth. Back from the dead. Come for her revenge and her baby girl.
Talan found his own voice. “Oh please! Cut this little bastard out of me, Lyl!”
She forced his face into the pillow, and he felt the blade cut through veins and tendons and windpipe. Cut him out! Talan begged from deep inside. Cut him out of me and throw him on the floor!
But the only thing that came out of him was blood.
Talan managed to turn his head, and by the moonlight watched Lyleth back away, naked and bloody. She tripped over the gagged and bound Nesta who was struggling to get free.
Talan could feel the creatures congealing from his blood, creeping from the gash at his throat and spilling over the pillow onto the floor. He tried to scream, but a gurgle came forth with a spewing of white worms. The bed was alive with them. But the little man began knitting his flesh back together just as he’d done before.
Still, Talan was not free.
A gasp wheezed through the wreckage of his throat. His heart convulsed, gaining a steady rhythm until it beat evenly once again. Lyleth had failed. Eternity filled Talan’s body with its sticky life. The stump of his soul gazed up from his bowels to the place where the little man had climbed. Talan had lost his hold on this flesh, and whatever was left of his mind surrendered to the will of the little man. He laughed at Talan, his cheeks vibrant with Talan’s sapped life, as he dropped his feces down to mix with the maggots.
Lyleth had failed. And now the little man was peeling the shell of the chrysalis away, freeing himself and leaving Talan to rot in his gut with the rest of the vermin.
The little man was speaking with Talan’s tongue, though his voice wheezed and gurgled as the sinews reformed, the muscle reknit and his windpipe closed. “You’re a fool.”
Lyleth lunged at him again, but the little man deflected her attack. His hands closed around her throat with a strength that came from somewhere else.
With Lyleth choking and struggling beneath him, he looked up to see Angharad standing in the doorway with a rushlight in her hand. The child screamed. The little man released Lyleth.
The guards would soon follow.
“Go,” the child told her mother. “Run.”
Lyleth scrambled to her feet, her hands to her throat. She croaked, “Not without you.”
“Do as I say, mother.” But the voice was not that of a child, but the wind moving through a forest, or a hive of bees in midsummer.
The surprise on Lyleth’s face said she hadn’t known who her daughter really was. Was she so blind?
And Lyleth was gone.
Angharad freed Nesta and met the guards at the door.
“Stop that woman!” Nesta demanded. “She tried to kill the king.”
“I just had a nightmare,” Angharad told the guards. “Nothing more. The king is safe.” Couldn’t they see the worms on the bed? On the floor?
But they listened to the child, the solás to the king, and gave no chase to Lyleth.
“You must drink this,” Angharad begged him, holding out a cup of that vile sleeping draught of hers. “It will heal your throat.” And if Talan stayed quiet, perhaps the little man would drink it and sleep. Yes, drink it you vile leech, drink it down and bring it to me.
He was awash in the warm, sweet fluid. He tried to drown himself in it, but it buoyed him up, like an over-salty sea, higher, until the creature vomited and Talan rode the tide to the opening of his trachea and there clung to the ragged mess left by Lyleth’s knife. He did have legs, he was certain of it.
Darkness followed.
Chapter 20
Connor cradled his wounded arm and tried to keep up with Lyleth and Dylan, sloshing their way ahead of him in a stream of excrement. Lyleth had bandaged Connor’s arm so tightly, his fingers were going numb, but he could feel the wetness of blood soaking through, even in the darkness of this sewer.
Fiach had told them to get as far away from Caer Emlyn as possible. Lyl took some convincing, vowing that she would not leave her daughter behind.
“If Talan finds you, he will kill you,” Fiach had told her. “What good will you be to the child then?” When she refused to go, he added, “I won’t let anything happen to Angharad, I swear it.”
What could Fiach do in the face of the amassed army of Ys that waited outside the walls of Caer Emlyn? Connor knew that as soon as Lyleth was safely away, Fiach would hand over the king to his troops or suffer a siege he could not hope to win. What then? Talan would head straight for the Red Bog and the cromm. Whether it happened soon or in a week or two, it would happen. And Angharad would be there to work whatever magic she possessed for reasons none of them understood.
Connor didn’t have to ask Lyleth to know she intended to be there when it happened. What mother wouldn’t?
Lyleth had grudgingly agreed to Fiach’s plan, and now she led the way as they waded through shit toward the walls of the city. With a fistful of rushlights, spider webs sizzled in the flame as she led the way through the foul tunnel.
“How is it possible?” she wailed. “I cut clean through half his neck.”
Connor replied, “Coming from someone who resurrected a king?” The splashing of his feet echoed into darkness.
“People die,” Dylan declared. “That man is no man. He’s something else.”
“A zombie,” Connor said.
“A what?” Lyleth and Dylan said in unison.
“A rotting corpse that walks around looking for brains to eat.”
Lyleth glanced over her shoulder and gave Connor a disgusted look.
“If anyone’s rotten, it’s you,” Dylan said, and gave Connor’s shoulder a brotherly squeeze.
Connor hadn’t thought of himself quite like a zombie, but Dylan was right. The cut on his cheek looked as fresh as the day he'd gotten it, and in spite of Lyleth’s bandage job, the stab wound Talan had inflicted to his left arm was bleeding like a bastard. Zombies didn’t heal. They didn’t die either, and Connor had the feeling that this was where he differed from a zombie.
“And Nesta,” Lyleth fumed. “For the High Brehon to accept one such as her… it means the judges themselves are Sunless. We’ve got a fight before us that we could never imagine.”
It was hard to tell how far they’d gone in this narrow tunnel, but it came to an end at last. The only problem was the iron grate that sealed it was locked from the outside. By the moonlight, it appeared the foul water from the tunnel trickled into a muddy stream outside before vanishing down another hole.
Connor could see the city wall just a stone’s throw away. They must be near the market square, behind the weaver’s cottages. He could smell animal dung mixed in with the sewage smell. Maybe this world wasn’t all beauty and light after all.
“Fiach didn’t think about this?” Connor said with his fingers laced through the grate.
“He’ll send someone,” Lyleth said. She motioned for Connor to tak
e a seat on the one boulder that was not submerged. She held the rushlight up to examine his arm. “You’re still bleeding.” He could feel the cool of the saturated bandage on his skin.
“The moon is almost full,” he pointed out as she poked around under the bandage.
“Aye, so ‘tis. I can tell you one thing about that soothblade. It won’t kill whatever’s inside Talan.”
“I could have told you that,” Connor scoffed. “After all, I watched an ice-born slice Talan’s head clean off six years ago.”
“That would have been good to know.”
“I didn’t know Talan and that headless man were the same person until I was standing right in front of him.”
“I know.” She gave him a soft pat on his wounded shoulder. “It was wise of you, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“You told Talan that Nechtan intended to lead an army through the open well.” She handed the rushlights to Dylan. “Hold this.”
“How do we know it’s not true?” Dylan leaned against the grate, the rushlights casting a golden glow over his face.
“Because Connor made it up. But if the judges are all Sunless like Nesta,” Lyleth said, wrapping a fresh length of linen around Connor’s arm and tying it tighter, “we’ll need Nechtan and anyone he can bring across.” She seemed to remember something suddenly, and said, “You told me that Nechtan is crippled. How could such a man lead an army?”
“You know him better than I do,” Connor said, “and you know he can still lead.”
Even by moonlight, Connor could see her smile.
**
It was dawn when Connor woke to Dylan’s jostling. “She’s coming,” Dylan said.
Connor roused from the muck to see the alewife waddling toward the grate. Before the town awoke, the woman led them to the stable behind the alehouse. The two horses they’d ridden from the bog were still there, and so was Brixia. Connor was surprised the alewife hadn’t sold them.
“This is a terrible hiding place,” Connor said.
“It’s just until we can get out of the city,” Lyleth said.
Brixia whinnied when she saw Connor, and he gave her a good scratch.