by Myers, Karen
They would just reappear publicly and brazen it out, and Lludd’s court would be the best place for that. But to do that, she needed to reingratiate herself with her father.
Tonight she swallowed her pride and abased herself before him on her knees, on both her own behalf and for Gwythyr.
She resented Gwythyr not making his own obeisance, but he would not bend his neck nor back down. He would need that arrogance at Nos Galan Mai, so she tried not to fault him for it now.
He father left her kneeling for a few moments to make his point, but then proved surprisingly forgiving.
“Enough, my daughter,” he said, and gestured for her to rise. “What the two of you attempted was impetuous but risky, and you failed. No shame in trying.”
He boasted, and she let him. “It’s as well that I’ve got other plans in motion, slower and more sure.”
She looked a question at him encouragingly, but he refused to elaborate.
“Gwyn may keep his huntsman, but I think it will do him little good,” he said.
CHAPTER 28
On the next night, Eurig was surprised to find Ives waiting for him in Gwyn’s council room after an uneventful dinner. He looked worried and impatient, both unusual for a lutin of his years and dignity.
He didn’t wait for greetings. As soon as Eurig closed the door, he announced, “I received strange news after everyone went in to dinner. Dyfnallt came to warn me that something might happen later tonight at the kennels. He said he ‘couldn’t stomach it’ and offered to help.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I think I do. Alun vouches for him. They’ve been spending a lot of time in each other’s company. Something about wood carving.”
“Did he tell you what would happen?”
“I’m not sure how much he knows,” Ives said.
Before they could get far into the discussion, a knock on the door interrupted them. Without waiting, Hadyn came in, with a worried cadet.
“Come with me immediately,” he said. “Walk calmly through the great hall and don’t let them see anything in your faces.”
“Is it the kennels,” Ives asked, alarmed. “Already?”
Hadyn looked at him, puzzled. “No. It’s below ground, here.”
“Better get back to the kennels, Ives,” Eurig said. “Recruit Dyfnallt if you think you should. I trust your judgment.”
Eurig, Hadyn, and the cadet made their way to the back stairs and descended down three levels to the master-key vault with its guards.
The leader of the cadets had set a group in position to defend from any attack from above. The rest were gathered far down the corridor. As Hadyn and Eurig approached the vault, they parted to reveal a dead man, blasted by a fiery strike before he could open the way-token vault.
Someone had already turned him over. Eurig bent down to look at the face. “Does anyone know him?” he asked.
Hadyn said, “I think he’s been working in the orchard. We’ll have to check with Ifor Moel. I’ve already asked—no one saw him approach, so he must have been glamoured.”
The cleanup and preliminary investigation took an hour or two, and they summoned people down to speak with them. Finally they reached a pause and decided to stop for the night. Hadyn leaned over to ask Eurig privately, “Are there more defenses, or did he spring the only one?”
Eurig eyed him. “I trust you with my life, weapons-master, but I think I’ll leave that question unanswered anyway, if you don’t mind.”
Hadyn nodded, unruffled. “Very wise. Safer that way.”
They headed wearily upstairs together, ready to put an end to the day. When they reached ground level, Eurig stepped outside to dismiss Hadyn to his quarters and they discovered a great commotion. The guards and cadets were running across the yards with buckets and water, and they smelled smoke. Fire flickered off to the left, by the kennels.
Rhodri loomed up out of the dark. “Where have you been?” he cried at them.
“You, there.” Eurig snagged a guard running by. “Come here and attend me for a few moments.”
To Hadyn, he said, “Go find out what’s happening and help. I’ll be right behind you.”
He had to send preliminary word to Gwyn. It might be hours before they knew more. He returned to the council room with the guard and composed a brief message.
“Get this to a courier for immediate delivery to our lord Gwyn.”
The guard saluted him and left.
Rhodri stood, exhausted, his legs trembling, and watched more of the walls collapse into rubble, blackened and smoldering. It felt as if they had battled the blaze forever.
It was hard to make out just how bad the destruction was at the kennels, with only the torches and the remains of the fire itself providing light, but from here it looked like they had burned to the ground. There’d been plenty of wood inside, but he didn’t understand how the walls themselves could have been affected, unless there had been some magical help.
His hands were blistered from hauling buckets and throwing water with everyone else, and now he straightened up and tried to stretch the abused muscles in his back. Eurig was still standing at his post near the entrance directing the fight against the flames, and Rhodri began to make his long way over to him, past the little knots of people with nothing left to do. They would normally have congratulated each other, as people do when they survive an emergency, but too many were unaccounted for. There was an unnatural silence.
Rhodri hadn’t spoken to Eurig since he’d appealed to him outside the manor house. Where had he been, that he’d missed the start of the fire? And Hadyn, too?
Eurig, grim-faced, told Hadyn to set up guards around the remains. No one was to go in or out.
Now that Rhodri had a moment without physical effort, his mind clamored for information. Was anyone caught inside? He looked around as he approached Eurig, but he didn’t see the hunt staff or Ives. They can’t have been in there, surely? Not all of them. Maybe they were surveying the wreckage. But, then, where was Maelgwn?
And what about the hounds? The kennels were already ablaze when Rhodri got there and he heard nothing inside, but he feared the worst. He hadn’t seen a single hound emerge.
Something nagged at him. Ah, yes, Gwion and Dyfnallt were nowhere to be found, either. Well that much, at least, was no surprise.
He was relieved to see Ives turn up unexpectedly out of the darkness on the far side of the circle surrounding Eurig. Rhodri quickened his pace to ask his questions, but Ives pulled Eurig aside and spoke to him, rapidly and very quietly. Eurig’s face tautened. Rhodri stopped his approach and watched the interaction. Bad news, he thought. What’s going on?
Eurig called for silence in the crowd. When he got it, interrupted by the ongoing collapses in the rubble, he announced, “Ives says it started in a corridor next to the huntsman’s office and spread unnaturally from there. Everyone is to stay out while Thomas Kethin, Ives, and I search.”
Those three equipped themselves with shovels and torches from the nearby firefighters and strode off into the ruin over the collapsed remains of the main gates.
The crowd waited in near silence, as heads turned and tried to estimate who was unaccounted for. A quiet buzz of speculation followed.
Rhodri spotted the kennel-men and joined them. “Have you seen Brynach or Benitoe? Maelgwn?”
They shook their heads.
“What about the hounds?”
Tanguy said, “We weren’t in the building when it happened. We don’t know.” The look of anguish on his face was heart-rending.
They waited for several long minutes in the cold spring night. The reek of smoke was everywhere, and there were no clean faces to be seen.
At last Eurig and the others re-emerged. He wrote a quick note for Gwyn and handed it to the courier who had been waiting patiently all this time while Eurig commanded the fire-fighting.
“You relayed the first message? Gorwel allowed it to pass at Bryntirion?” Eurig asked.
“Yes, my lord.”
“This is the followup. Be sure Gwyn gets it.”
The courier took it from him and walked briskly to the stables where his horse was held ready, out of the commotion of the fire. Rhodri heard him thunder off a few moments later, headed for the Travelers’ Way.
Rhodri waited while Eurig directed the start of the cleanup efforts. Then he swallowed and finally approached Eurig directly. He had to know. “Tell me how bad it is, please. Are the missing people dead?”
He thought they must be. If they’d only been hurt, there would have been some visible effort to help them. Brynach was one of them, Eurig’s great-nephew.
His stomach ached with dread. The hounds must have been killed.
Eurig’s expression was unreadable. He hesitated a moment, then said, building up to the bad news, “The Family Way is blocked with rubble and can’t be used.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “The huntsman’s office and all its contents are destroyed.”
Rhodri pushed impatiently. “But the hounds? The people?”
Eurig looked at him indecisively, and before he could continue, they heard the hoof beats of a galloping horse. Someone in the darkness must have grabbed its reins, for he heard a saddle creak and the courier, the same who had left most of an hour ago, strode in on foot.
He bowed to Eurig. “Lludd’s men are no longer letting anyone through.”
He handed the message back to Eurig who took it automatically and stared off after him for a moment. He rubbed his face and said, half to himself, “So, we’re on our own.”
He turned to Rhodri as if to continue their interrupted conversation. Rhodri couldn’t read his face at all. Fairly useless to play at diplomacy, he thought, when I can’t interpret the expression of a canny fellow like Eurig. Is this a mask to cover the loss of his kinsman, or something else?
“Come with me,” Eurig said. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”
He looked hard at Rhodri, as if seeing him for the first time. “I need to speak with you, as a member of Gwyn’s family. We must all pull together now.”
Cernunnos took advantage of this body’s deep sleep in the pre-dawn hours to let his touch roam out to all his beasts, near and far.
He resented Senua’s intrusion in the form of the kitten, but was somewhat mollified by her use of a living creature instead of an object. He grudgingly accepted that choice as an acknowledgment of his primacy here. This man was his, as much as any hound. He’d gotten comfortable with him and inhabited him directly more and more often.
He looked in on the rock-wights casually, all things in Annwn being more or less “nearby” from his perspective. It was good to have them reconnected back to the above-ground world. He could no longer remember if he had learned his powers over the ways from them or not, it was too long ago, and he hadn’t found it important enough to keep track of.
It was strange that this avatar of his should have been the agent of bringing the rock-wights back to the attention of the fae. He didn’t regret healing him afterward, admitting to a curiosity about what he might do next. This one might be worth keeping. Not like his father.
His attention passed over to Gwyn’s court, to see how his hounds were doing. He couldn’t find them. Anywhere. Where were the hounds?
He erupted into the body and bugled in rage, stumbling from the bed with its confining covers. From the background he could hear his awakened host protesting feebly, and he ignored him. Have they destroyed his hounds? Did they think to avoid his justice that way?
How dare they!
He held his host’s protests off, easily. Now, he swore. He would avenge them now.
His mind filled with rage and sorrow and turned dark, dark and black.
No mercy.
George hurtled out of sleep and out of bed unclothed, already transformed to the deer-man. Cernunnos bugled in rage and alarm. He tried to orient himself. It smelled like early morning. He didn’t think there was anyone else in the room, that they were under attack.
He’d never been seized like this before, by an uncontrollable Cernunnos. He sought his mental shelter, the one Morien had helped him build, and felt the tornado outside shake his stone walls as if it would flatten them.
What was wrong? What had happened? He probed with a very light touch, fearing to turn the attention of the storm upon him.
The answer roared back at him. The hounds, huntsman, my hounds. Gone.
He shrank back, appalled and stunned. No! It can’t be. How?
There were no answers.
He felt Cernunnos’s descent into black rage and feared the result. What would the god do?
He could hear knocks on the door—the noise had roused his neighbors. Would Cernunnos turn on them?
He tried to take back the form, at least to the horned man so he could speak, and succeeded.
“Stay out,” he cried. “Stay out, it’s not safe. There’s nothing you can do.”
He lost control of the form again and seized the edge of the bedframe at the foot of the bed in an attempt to anchor the body and not let it rage around the room. He bent his head down and held on tight, his bare feet chilled against the stone floor.
Cernunnos in the depths suddenly stilled from the hot rage into a cold blackness, and this alarmed George even more.
Cernunnos spoke to him, hollowly, from within. Will you assist me, huntsman?
With all my heart, George thought to him. Just don’t harm the innocent in your revenge.
No one is innocent, he heard. George could feel his black rage against people, all people.
You’re wrong, great lord, he thought. You’ll know that when you recover.
Wordless disagreement rose from the gulf.
The kitten clawed his way up onto the bed and walked over to them, where they leaned over the foot. George feared for its safety with the deer-headed man, but Cernunnos tilted their head and seemed to listen to it. The kitten leapt boldly to the fur-covered shoulder, careful with its claws, and rubbed against their face, and George in astonishment felt Cernunnos return the caress with his own face, nuzzling the small beast. He heard him say, faintly, thank you, my lady. Who was he talking to? The kitten wasn’t female.
With his head still lowered, George carefully edged back around to the side of the bed and perched there, his heels raised and parked on the bedframe. He pulled the scattered blankets up over his lap and tried to catch his breath.
Movement caught his eye and he looked up to find that Ceridwen and Morien had cautiously entered his room, closing the door behind them, and stood watching him from a distance. He didn’t know how long they’d been there.
His heart was still pounding, but his breathing was quieting. He tried again to pull the form back, and this time Cernunnos relented and withdrew.
The hounds, he thought sorrowfully, and he bowed his human head and wept.
Cythraul and Rhymi, the outsider hounds so dear to Cernunnos. Dando, his captain, his favorite. His second-in-command. Straight and clean and steady. The young entry, just beginning their lives’ work. And all the whelps, a month old. He’d never even seen them. And their dams.
His own dogs slept in the kennels when he was away. Were they gone, too? Did he bring them here from the human world to their deaths?
He felt Cernunnos’s grief overtake and overwhelm his own like a following wave and he keened over them, leaning his crossed arms over his knees to bury his face and rocking in place.
George and the god mourned together for some period of time.
He felt a soft touch on his naked, scarred back and he lifted his tear-streaked face.
Ceridwen asked, softly. “Can you tell us what happened?”
He cleared his throat. “I don’t really know,” he said. “Cernunnos says the hounds are gone.”
“Gone?”
“I think he means dead.” He stumbled over the word. “He can’t find them.” He tried to wipe his face with his hands and pulled up the edge of the sheet to use instead
.
Ceridwen raised her hand to her mouth. “How…?”
“He doesn’t have any details. I don’t think he knows.” He drew a ragged breath, trying to still the residual sobs.
“Folly,” he muttered, half to himself. “I should never have left them, never have let Angharad come. Fool. Fool.” He beat his head with his fist.
She sat on the bed next to him.
“You know there was nothing else you could do, if you wanted her to be safe for the longer term.”
George turned his head from her. “You may think Lludd will honor guest right, but I don’t. And the hounds…” He shivered and his breath caught. “I want Gwyn to succeed but can he do it? Or will we all die, trying to make it happen?”
He lifted his head and looked across the room at Morien. “Cernunnos wants revenge badly, right now. He has his own way of judging things and he is beyond enraged. I don’t know if he’ll be the least bit restrained by me now.”
Sorrowfully, he said to both of them, “All of Gwyn’s plans come to nothing with this.”
Morien said, soberly, “Go back to sleep if you can, huntsman. We can do nothing until we have more information. If Gwyn knows anything more, it will still be several hours before he can relay the news to us.”
He glanced at Ceridwen as she returned to the doorway. “There will be no sessions today.”
They left him alone, then, staring desolately into the early morning dimness of the room. The kitten sat in his blanket-covered lap and butted his head against his hand whenever it stopped moving.
CHAPTER 29
Gwyn sat with Edern and Angharad in her rooms in the afternoon, speaking with a low voice despite the closed doors between them and any listeners.
“So Lludd has blocked your messengers?” Angharad said. “He has invaded your own domain here and holds your other lands hostage. That should have all the great lords up in arms at the abuse of one of their own. How can they sit easy?”
Gwyn shook his head. “They pretend it’s just a family quarrel and refuse to become involved. They don’t think it can happen to them.”