by Terry Madden
The rushlights went out one after another as the sea breeze snuffed them.
“You serve one far greater than us.” Talan heard his own voice speak the words. But it was the little man. He’d awakened from his slumber. “We will free our lord, and he will restore the land to those who have waited.”
“What is it, my lord?” His wife asked. Yseult, that was her name. He left the window and sat down on the bed beside her, stroking her dark hair.
“Go,” he said. “Call the servants to relight the rushes.”
She moaned, turned her kittenish face to him, saying, “Dreams again?” Her hand was on his cheek, her thumb on his lips. Did she want to touch the little man? He opened his mouth wide, but she drew her hand away.
“Go,” he told her.
With a worried look, she did as bidden. The music of the harp filled his ears as Talan rose and found the hand mirror. Opening his mouth as wide as possible, he watched the fiend stride out to balance on the tip of his tongue. A naked little worm of a man, complete with a rigid cock like the stalk of a snail’s eye. His fists were planted on his narrow hips, his hairless skin a translucent sheath through which the pebble of his heart fluttered bright and red. His eyes were embers the size of sand grains peering from beneath the furrowed shelf of his brow.
“To the Red Bog, slave,” he repeated. “Your lord calls. He hungers, and none but he can set ye free. Like a mother bird, ye are, like a winged wasp, like a scorpion with stinger at the ready. To the bog, to the bog, to the bog! None but ye can set him free.”
Talan let his hand creep up his chest, ever so slowly. He made a snatch at the man. But his hand came away empty, for the creature had retreated into his gullet, raising his gorge.
“Cowardly bastard!” Talan cried and thrust his finger down his throat, forcing his supper out onto the floor.
Chunks of meat, peas, bile, but no little man. Where was he hiding? What part of Talan’s innards sheltered this vile creature?
“Come out, you beast!” He tried again, heaving up nothing but a stream of spittle.
Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he looked up to see Angharad standing there in her nightdress amid the flickering rushlights. She looked like a goddess-child with wings of light growing from her tiny back, the flames of her hair a wild aura. Filled with starlight, that’s what she was. Child of the dead. Child of two worlds.
“You suffer, cousin,” she said with her tiny child voice.
“That I do.” He felt hope sting him. Perhaps she knew how to rid him of this little man. He half-crawled to her, and still on his knees, opened his mouth and thrust out his tongue.
But Angharad was looking into his eyes, not his mouth.
“I heard your cries from my room. You’ve not slept,” she decreed.
“But can’t you see him? Look here. Look again.” He stuck out his tongue as far as he could, but he felt the little man lodge in his throat like a dry crust.
“Maybe it’s a leech-soul,” the child stated. “Someone you know who’s died, someone who was tethered. He won’t let you go until you’ve done his bidding.”
“Yes, yes. I’ve known many who’ve died. I’ve killed many myself. One who was tethered? I must go to the bog.”
“You must sleep,” the girl said. “The other solás, the one who died, surely she had some herbs and calmatives somewhere?”
“She did.” He scrambled to his feet, realized he was naked, and pulled a robe around himself. “There is a room filled with unguents, powders, herbs, and many other such things.” Talan knew the room contained the magical workings of the soulstalker, Irjan, who had served Ava. Perhaps this child knew what to do with such things.
“Perhaps there’s something there that can help you.”
“Just rid me of this vile little man!” As he said it, his gorge twisted and he heaved onto the floor again.
“Come with me,” the child said.
He took her hand and led her down the corridor, down the eastern stairs to the second floor which housed the servants. The soulstalker’s room was locked, as Talan had ordered, so he was forced to wake his seneschal to open it.
“Do you think it wise to go into that room, my lord?” the old man asked, the strings of his nightcap caught in his beard. Stooped by the weight of his keys, Rhun had served as seneschal to Nechtan and saw his service to Talan as an extension of his loyalty to his most-loved king. It made Talan feel deserving of Rhun’s dotage.
“Wisdom has nothing to do with it, Rhun. I must sleep. Angharad says I must.”
No sooner did they have the door to the forbidden room open than the beautiful nursemaid, sent by Lyleth to look after the child, came hurrying down the corridor, her white nightgown aflutter. Talan had done the lovely girl a service, taking her from that windy isle. He would make use of her soon, if the little man in his mouth was to be believed.
“Nothing to fear,” Talan said to her, “your charge is here.” He firmly planted his hands on Angharad’s shoulders. The nursemaid’s name was Elowen, he recalled.
“Aye, my lord.” But she stayed, looking on as Angharad took a burning rush and stepped into the soulstalker’s room.
Talan’s previous solás wanted no part of this collection of strange goods. They were gathered, she had told him, to work magic of an ancient sort, to shape soul-stuff into creatures whose existence was tied to the shaper. Blood magic. Since then he had wondered if the little man inside him could have come from magic such as this.
Angharad moved around the room slowly, taking a jar here to sniff, a powder there, pressed between her fingers as if the texture itself could identify it. With her motion, dust and the smell of herbs far past freshness filled the room. Indeed, the rafters were hung with herbs that had dropped their leaves long ago and now crunched as the child stepped on them. More lids opened and closed in rapid succession releasing a stew of smells—rancid fat, sap, ground stones and tree barks.
“This is the one Irjan used to kill my father.” Angharad’s small voice lacked any trace of emotion. Of course, she’d never known Nechtan, how could she miss him? She pointed to a small horn flask. “Don’t touch it.”
“You’ve been likewise trained in medicinals?” Talan asked the lovely nursemaid named Elowen, who like him, merely watched from the doorway.
“Aye, my lord. Six years of such.” She did not meet his eyes when she spoke.
“Six years you’ve been a bee in Lyleth’s hive. You must know much then.”
Fear flashed in her eyes. What was it she really knew? Did she plan to poison him as Irjan had poisoned Nechtan? The idea made him laugh aloud. He said, “My little cousin was born with such knowledge it would seem, and I would imagine she required little training.”
“Aye, my lord.”
Angharad pointed to a jar on a high shelf. “Can you fetch that down for me?”
Talan retrieved it, gray with dust, and handed it to her. She pulled the cork and removed some with the tip of a knife she’d found on the table. She sniffed it and offered Elowen the opportunity to do the same.
“Heliotrope,” Elowen said.
“I shall mix it with the skullcap, here.” Angharad pointed at another jar.
“Why not white poppy?” Elowen asked.
“My cousin has visitors enough. Poppy would only bring more.”
Angharad glanced up at him as if for confirmation. So, she had seen the little man upon his tongue. Why had she not said so?
Talan had started out of the room when Angharad said, “Reach that jar for me, cousin. Just there.” She pointed at what must have been a clear glass container once, but was now veiled in dust like everything else.
Talan had to stand on a stool to reach it. Too heavy to be picked up with one hand, he cradled it against his chest, dirtying his robe. But when he brushed off the dust, he saw an eye blink at him. He bobbled the jar but didn’t drop it, and the thing inside shifted, its black skin coiled so tightly inside the jar, it was a wonder it could move at all.
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He handed it to Angharad. “What is it?”
“Have you never seen a salamander? Trapped these six years and more, no doubt.”
“Still alive?” Elowen asked.
“Poor thing,” Angharad cooed through the glass. “You must be hungry, aye. I shall find you a fat worm or two.”
Hugging the jar, she smiled up at Talan and led the way from the room.
“I shall bring sleep to you in but a few minutes, cousin. After I fetch some honey from the kitchen.”
**
The servants had lit new rushlights and his bedchamber once again pulsed with golden light. He returned to his bed, feeling the bulge of the little man beating against his belly. Was this what pregnant women felt? If he could shit this creature out, he would do so.
Angharad entered without a knock.
“Your sleep will be deep and restful,” she said, sitting beside him on the edge of the bed. “Drink this.”
She held out a tiny cup that smelled of cat piss and honey.
“Did you see him?” he asked before drinking it.
She took his hand in hers. A warm, soft, damp child’s hand. “Are you afraid, cousin?” she asked him.
“Did you see him?”
“I see that you are tormented. That I see clearly.”
He drank down the terrible medicine and handed the cup back to her. “What should I fear with you at my side?”
He turned her hand palm up and ran his fingers over the new tattoo of the water horse on her little wrist, still pink with tenderness. How could he have forgotten they’d gone through the binding ceremony? How long had he been back at Caer Ys? She was his now, and he was hers. Just as every king and solás before him, just as Lyleth and Nechtan had been.
“Don’t you fear the god you serve?” she asked.
“I serve no god, green or otherwise.”
“Ah, but you do. His messenger has found you. He’s burrowed into you like a worm burrows into a fallen apple. What is it the leech-soul tells you to do?”
“’Go to the Red Bog,’ is what he tells me. ‘Your lord awaits. He hungers.’” His belly growled in response. “Tell me how to cast him out.”
She regarded him with a face that belonged to an ancient, and said, “It will hurt.”
“So be it.”
**
The fast weakened him. Nothing but a boiled concoction of herbs that Angharad had cooked up had passed his lips, and she sang to him, an incessant hymn that had no end in a language he could not understand, full of notes that sounded discordant to his ears.
When the child had left him for the night, Rhun protested, saying, “You should not trust the child. She’d as well poison you as not. She has a claim to your throne, you know, my lord.”
“Let her mix her worst.”
At the end of the third day, Angharad led him to the shore of the bay, to the foot of the cliffs surrounding Caer Ys. He felt as though his feet met an unseen ground that rose higher than the path. He was treading another path, in a different land and his mind was nothing but an incessant whisper over the shoulder of the little man. They had become one. Digging the roots of a tree from the flesh of a corpse would be easier than untangling the two souls that fought over his sorry flesh.
He stumbled.
The man Lyleth had sent to watch over the child caught him. Dylan his name was. Talan had a distant memory of getting into a scrap with him on the battlefield. He was an insolent, rash peasant boy and was not to be trusted, that one. The little man had told him so.
“I remember you,” he told Dylan who had a firm grip on Talan’s arm. “You tried to punch me in the face.”
“You’ve a good memory, my lord. In fact, I believe I succeeded.” Was that a smug smile turning the corners of the man’s mouth? If Talan were stronger, he’d bloody him now.
He could only say, “I feel certain you will keep my little cousin safe. You have been with Lyleth since the battle in Cedewain?”
“Since my lord, Nechtan, died. Aye.”
“You grieve for him still.”
“I shall always grieve for him, my lord.” Perhaps the little man was right for once. Dylan was not to be trusted.
Once they reached the strand, Angharad ordered a hole dug just beyond the reach of the tide, and as the galling tune played on, she tossed herbs and stones into the hole. Who played the harp? The notes were needles of ice sliding beneath the chitinous crust of Talan’s skin.
Try, try to hurt me, ye’ll find ‘tis not to be! The little man’s voice belched from Talan’s throat, and his eyes rolled up into his head. He clawed at his chest until someone clutched his arms and tied them behind his back.
Talan landed face-first in the sand. The grains pressed against his open eyes, but he could not close them.
Then they were dragging him into the sea. The touch of the water was nothing but a distant chill, the sting of saltwater up his nose was a draught of cleansing potion. It ran down his throat, and he vomited into the waves.
Dylan planted a hand on his head and forced him under. He gulped in the sea, and everything became still. Through the watery greenscape, he saw figures move, dancing in the shafts of sunlight. Souls of the unborn waiting to come to shore.
How he wanted to join them.
He surfaced, choking. Dylan’s fingers were knotted in Talan’s hair, and he could see Angharad on the shore, pouring oil over the things in the hole.
Dylan left him at the water’s edge, half weightless in the surf, and half heavier than a warhorse. He could not crawl, he could not breathe. And the little man cried out with Talan’s lungs, Your green gods will fall!
Angharad set the things ablaze, and flames leapt out of the hole, issuing from the void between worlds. She smothered the blaze with a bundle of green leaves until nothing but pungent fumes remained.
His skin felt crisp like roasted boar, yet he hadn’t drawn near the fire yet.
“Put him in,” she ordered Dylan.
Die, witch! the little man screamed, forcing Talan’s mouth open so wide he felt his jaw pop, his teeth lengthen into fangs. He smelled the child’s flesh and wanted nothing more than to taste it, but he was held fast by Dylan who threw him feet first into the hole.
His feet were on fire as Elowen and Dylan raced to dig a trench in the sand, a circle about an arm’s length deep. A wave came in and filled the hole, and Talan cried out as the thing inside twisted, larva in a cocoon, wriggling to be free. But his skin hardened into a shell, and the little man laughed, Get ye to the Red Bog. Your lord hungers, and none but he can set ye free.
His nose filled with vapors rising through the sand from the smoldering herbs. The tide came and went, and Talan slept, buried, nothing but his head in this world, dreaming that he shat a room full of blood. Angharad was still singing. She dribbled water between Talan’s parched lips, but the little man hammered on his tongue, danced a jig, singing over Angharad’s tune, Take us to the Red Bog. He hungers, and none but he can set ye free.
“In one cycle of the moon,” Angharad whispered to him, “the Hunter will carry a red star aloft. Only then will the old god be stirred. Only then will the well be opened.”
He opened his eyes to find no one there. Nothing but the sea hissing before him.
Inside the chrysalis of his skin, his bones shifted like wings.
Chapter 5
The next day, Lyleth sat on the cliff above the cove, watching the sea and listening to the sky, waiting for a fishing scow to put in to trade. Breaca arrived with a basket of smoked salmon and nut bread.
“Angharad is old for her years,” Breaca said in a reassuring tone. She took a seat in the grass beside Lyleth. “She’ll know what she must do.”
“He killed his solás,” Lyleth proclaimed.
“Pyrs said she died in battle.”
Lyleth shook her head. “She died at the hands of her king. I saw it, Breaca. And he’ll kill Angharad if she fails him.”
“What can you do?”
; Lyleth and Nechtan had been used by the green gods to bring forth this child. How could Angharad’s destiny lie with such as Talan? How could this be the fate the green gods had prepared for her? Lyleth refused to believe it. She was done protecting Talan. It was time the judges of the Wildwood knew how Nechtan had died, how Maygan had died.
“I’ll take the first boat to the mainland,” Lyleth told Breaca. “You’ll lead the hive in my place.”
“And if you do nothing more than anger the king? What then?”
“Then I’ll steal her from him and flee.”
Breaca scoffed, “You’ll get both of you killed. Bide your time.”
“I’ll bide nothing.”
The next day, Lyleth boarded a small fishing scow and set off across the strait to the mainland of Arvon. She dismissed any thought of appealing to Pyrs, the chieftain there. He’d already proven his allegiance to Talan, had made no protest when Angharad was taken.
She traded one of the silver ingots Talan had left for a horse, and started south. When possible, she stayed off the road, for a woman traveling alone was never safe. She kept her bow strung and a sword on her belt, and made camp far enough from the road that no one would see her fires. She took up with a tinker and his family for some time, and when they reached a village, she divined the clouds in exchange for food and a barn for her horse. Try as she might, the clouds revealed nothing of her own future.
In a fortnight, she reached the edge of the Wistwood.
Lyleth slipped the bridle off her horse and left it with the saddle under a beech tree. If the horse was still here when she returned, so be it. She ran her hand down the mare’s bony face and whispered her thanks, explaining she could move faster through the trackless wood on foot. There were trails, but she had to find them first.
She took her initial bearing from the sun, knowing the nemeton lay southeast, but once she was swallowed by thicket and grove, she was forced to trust the growth of moss to direct her. By midday, she was lost. She sat down with her back to a rowan tree and opened the eyes of the forest, the great soul that dreamed the world. Through their roots and leaves, she whispered to the greenmen who guarded the wood. It wasn’t long before they replied, and found her.