by Terry Madden
This was her third day of waiting, and now the entire fortress speculated at the arrival of Talan’s army. Had he summoned them out of fear that Fiach knew about his devotion to the Crooked One? Did he think Fiach would defy him? Talan intended to stomp out any rebellion before it could start. It was nothing but a show of force today, but he was positioned for a siege if Fiach turned on him.
But now the coming of the army was overshadowed by the arrival of a messenger from the land of the dead. Connor. He had defied Lyleth’s orders to wait for her in the alehouse. He’d better have good reason for it.
“Gray all over, the man is, with eyes like a demon. What was his message?” the cook asked a servant.
“The king hears him out in private like,” said the serving girl, “for ye knows what he says, eh? He points a finger, surely. For there be those what say Talan killed Nechtan.”
“Killed him again, ye mean,” said the cook with a laugh. “Can’t kill what’s dead already.”
Supper was over when the cook called Lyleth to her, saying, “The lady summons ye. She waits in the herb garden.”
The lady? Had Fiach sent his wife with a message?
Lyleth found the lady Seryn seated on a stool beside a hedge of rosemary in the kitchen garden, a square of soil bounded on all sides by castle walls which protected the well at its center. Though her belly had yet to swell, Lyleth knew Seryn was with child.
Lyleth showed her palms.
“I should perhaps kneel before you, Lyleth,” Seryn said, “vanquisher of death.”
“An incorrect title, lady. It conveys the notion that it is a repeatable act.”
“You’ve tried then?”
She wasn’t the first to ask Lyleth if she’d tried to bring Nechtan back a second time.
“It seems I was but an instrument in the hands of the green gods.”
“Your actions changed the destiny of this land.”
And changes it still, Lyleth thought.
Seryn said, “Perhaps they will need to wield your magic again one day.”
Lyleth dearly hoped they would not.
Seryn was small and impish like many of the folk from the Southern Marches, her dark hair so thick it looked almost like a cap, woven with ribbons of gold and freshwater pearls. Her smile was given freely and certainly concealed no guile or envy. Reading her required little of Lyleth’s skills. She was full of a bright hopefulness and tender compassion, two qualities Lyleth had always admired. Seryn must have concluded that Fiach had brought Lyleth here to rekindle their love, a feat that would require far more reparation than simply allowing her to see her daughter. After all, Fiach had once tied Lyleth to Nechtan’s corpse and left her for dead.
“I have come only to be near my daughter,” Lyleth said. “Fiach has been kind enough to offer me that chance.”
“As he has told me.” Seryn took Lyleth’s hand and motioned for her to take the other stool. “You loved him once.”
Were all southerners so blunt?
“It’s been many years. Impossible things separate us.”
“But love cannot be scrubbed away. You love him still as he does you, for that is the nature of love.” She revealed her innocence. Perhaps Fiach had failed to tell his wife that he had tried to kill Lyleth.
A worm moved up the woody stalk of rosemary beside Seryn.
Lyleth said, “I give my word that once I’ve spoken with my child, I shall leave. But my identity must be kept from the king. I beg this of you. One mother to another.”
At the mention of her impending motherhood, Seryn tipped her head and narrowed her eyes. “Tell me what you see in my child’s future, druí.” She placed Lyleth’s palm on her belly, hidden beneath folds of scarlet farandine.
Her hand rested on the fine threads that covered Seryn’s belly. She felt the worms spinning the silk, drawing threads from their bodies. Umbilical starlight. Steeped in madder root, crushed and boiled. Birthed on the banks of a distant river, its blood drained and mixed with mordant. But she didn’t want to know the thread’s soul. She wanted to know the babe beneath the tangle of silk and dye, beneath the skin of Seryn’s belly.
Lyleth’s hand became instantly warm. She let her eyes close and opened her mind to the images that flashed before her. A boy. Wracked with an incessant cough, he wheezed and produced sputum the color of bile. A treatment of steam to open his lungs and—
“There you are.”
The door slammed shut between Lyleth and the child. Drawing her hand away from Seryn, she looked up to see Fiach, his hands on his hips as if he’d found two lost children.
“It appears you’ve made each other’s acquaintance.” He offered his hand to Seryn, who took it and got to her feet. He pulled her close to him. Was that meant to signal his affection for his young wife? Or to protect her from Lyleth?
She wanted to ask him about Connor, why he’d come and what Talan would do with him. But Connor was not her concern, only Angharad mattered.
He said, “Your daughter awaits you in the root cellar, Lyleth. Everything is arranged. You leave tonight.”
Lyleth showed her palms and started back to the kitchen.
The root cellar was at the bottom of a narrow spiral of stairs, and though the day was hot, it was like burrowing in snow. It smelled of apples and parsnips and dirt. Angharad was singing to herself in the dark. Lyleth held out the candle she’d brought to light the room.
And there she was.
She had grown since their parting on the Isle of Glass three months earlier, and she had lost a front tooth. But she fit warmly into that empty space in Lyleth’s arms.
At last Lyleth was able to ease her embrace, wipe away tears and brush back the loose hair from her child’s face. “I’ve missed you so.”
“It’s not been so long.”
A creature the size of a hare peeked from under Angharad’s skirt. Yellow spots covered its glistening black skin like stars. A lizard, or maybe a salamander, though it was far larger than any salamander Lyleth had ever seen. Its skin was not wet as a salamander’s would be, but shone with scales like polished stone. A collar of folded skin ruffled behind the creature’s ears, and Lyleth imagined it could fan this skin in a frightening way. Its golden eye rolled about in the socket until its gaze rested on Lyleth.
Angharad knelt and lifted the forequarters of the large creature and waved its foot at Lyleth, saying, “This is Ceinwen. I named her after the littlest of the seven sisters. Say hello to Mama, Ceinwen.”
The creature’s foot was more like a bird’s, with long talons at the end of long fingers which were strong and worked the way human hands work, clasping Angharad’s forefinger like a twig. Unlike a bird, it had sharp teeth to match its talons. Certainly not the kind of salamander one finds under damp leaves in the woods. Lyleth said, “Shouldn’t she be in water? Or is she a fire salamander?”
“She swims when we’re at the garden pond, then comes out and follows me.”
Angharad gathered the animal in a tight embrace and even in the dim light of her candle, she could see Angharad was crying. Lyleth knelt beside her. “What is it?”
“It’s almost time.”
“Time for what?”
Angharad turned teary eyes to Lyleth. “To open the well. I couldn’t let him kill Elowen. Not Elowen.”
Lyleth asked, “When will Talan open the well?”
“He can’t.”
“What?”
“Only I can.”
Angharad wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “He will free the Crooked One, and then the well must be opened. There’s no other way.”
“No other way to do what?”
“To stop him.” Angharad wiped at her tears and gazed intently into Lyleth’s eyes, saying, “The Sunless will come with the Old Blood and a battle will be fought once again for this land.” Angharad wiped at her eyes and released the salamander to waggle-walk beneath her skirt.
“Then we must stop it. Stop him.”
“Look into the c
louds at sunset, Mama. You know that’s not what’s to come.”
Lyleth gripped her daughter firmly by the shoulders saying, “Our future isn’t written in the clouds, child. We make it ourselves. And you must prepare to go. We’re leaving tonight.”
“But I can’t leave.” Angharad’s face bunched up in a pout. “The well—”
“Fiach has arranged passage for us to Cadurques.”
“If I go,” Angharad said, “Talan will go back to the bog, and when he does—”
“Angharad, child.” Lyleth drew her closer. “Your cousin is not what you think he is.”
“I know what he is, Mother. I’ve seen the little man on his tongue.”
“What little man?”
The story Angharad told her was one of sure possession. Elementals had been known to take up residence in people, remove all inhibitions and entice them to ecstatic madness. The souls of the executed, or perhaps the sacrificed, might do the same.
“The souls of the executed.” Lyleth must have said it aloud, for Angharad gave her a questioning look.
“What did this little man look like?”
“Besides small, he’s old and round. His name is Finlys, Talan says.”
The name Finlys stirred memories in Lyleth. She knew a druí of that name, one who served Talan’s father, Marchlew. “Did he wear the tonsure of a bard?”
“Perhaps. But he’s so small,” Angharad said. “He hollows out Talan’s insides so that he may be filled up with foulness. Talan is hiding in there. I’ve seen him, and he’s not so bad. He needs me.”
“I know this little man.” Lyleth couldn’t shake the image of Marchlew’s druí, Finlys, hanging from the branches of an oak tree without arms or legs. He’d been executed by Ava, drawn and quartered, his soul tethered to a conjured red crow that became Ava’s eyes. The day Lyleth shot the red crow from the sky, Talan had climbed the tree and touched the filthy remains of the executed druí. With his touch, the rotting flesh had dissembled into fine red powder. For the space of a heartbeat, it had covered Talan, and must have entered him.
“It was Finlys. He was a follower of the Sunless,” Lyleth said, remembering what Nesta had said of the druada who practiced blood magic.
“I couldn’t cast him out,” Angharad said. “I tried.”
“I need to know,” Lyleth said, looking deeply into Angharad’s eyes. “How did you send Elowen to the other side?”
“With the seeds.” Angharad took a pouch from the front of her gown. “I found them with the salamander in the room at Caer Ys.” She shook out plump spheres that, by candlelight, looked like black pomegranate seeds.
Angharad held a seed out to Ceinwen, and the salamander snapped it up. “She likes them.”
“What room?”
“It was the soulstalker’s, Talan told me. Filled with her things.”
Lyleth felt her heart race. Angharad had been in Irjan’s room? It was this ice-born soulstalker’s magic that had murdered Nechtan, and it still reached cold fingers into the present. “But Connor said it was a moth?”
The girl nodded. “It was a seed when I put it in Elowen’s mouth. The green gods answered my wish. They’re wishing seeds. I wished for a green moth to carry her across the Void, safe to the other side. To my father. I know he’ll protect her.”
Lore said that moths could carry messages to the dead. Lyleth recited the old charm, “Wings of night, soul take flight. What else did you find in Irjan’s room?”
“My friend.” Angharad squatted and picked up the squirming length of salamander, holding it in a fond embrace. Its mouth gaped and snapped at the air, then closed into a perpetual smile.
As the child mounted the steps, she said, “I know you fear opening the well, Mama. But it must be done. Besides, salamanders can eat your fears.” Lyleth knew her own fears were far greater than Angharad’s. “Try it, Mama.”
Lyleth stroked the cold head of the beast and its second eyelid slid over the golden bead of its eye. She whispered very softly so her child couldn’t hear, “I fear losing Angharad.”
The salamander gulped and snapped at the air, its tongue sucking back into its mouth. It returned to its perpetual smile.
Angharad giggled. “See? Gone!”
How Lyleth wished it was so easy.
Angharad wrapped her arms around Lyleth’s neck, like a child who’s fallen and skinned her knee. Lyleth inhaled the sweet child-smell of her hair and forbid herself to cry.
“You must go, Mama. There’s no telling what the little man will do to you if he finds you here.”
**
Night fell. It would be hours yet before Fiach’s guards would escort her from the castle. Connor had warned her that if Lyleth died in this world, she would return to the dead, and there stay until the worlds dissolved into the stars. She could accept that fate if she could prevent the Crooked One from waking. If the Old Blood never found their way back home… she could accept that as well. The plans, so carefully conjured and carried out by her and this druí Merryn, meant nothing to her now. The only person in two worlds she cared about was her daughter.
Angharad would not meet her before dawn, would not steal away to Cadurques as planned. Angharad bore an innocent fondness for the man trapped inside of Talan. The cousin who might be a strong and just ruler if he could be freed of the little man, Finlys. Lyleth understood the child’s affection, and yet, there was one truth that presented itself with unwavering clarity. The Crooked One would not be freed, and the Old Blood not returned from exile, if Talan was dead.
Chapter 18
In the past two days, Iris and Elowen had opened all but two boxes of books Merryn had stashed in the cellar, had flipped through every page in the hope that something would fall out. Anything unrelated to their search was stored in the shed along with family photos Dish had set aside to give to Bronwyn, whom he was expecting to arrive any moment. Celeste had succeeded in calming her down, and she’d finally agreed to come and help with the sorting. Dish had saved Merryn’s closet for Bronwyn. Nothing but clothes and shoes and the like in there.
Elowen took a scrapbook from one of the last boxes and slowly turned the pages. To her, a photograph was magical. Dish doubted she would recognize anything useful, but then again, it was possible. She knew the symbols of the druada better than he did.
“This looks like a map,” she said, pointing out a trifold brochure from the National Wetlands Centre in Wales.
“Aye, it is. But nothing we’re—” Map. Connor had said Merryn kept old maps that Clyde had collected. Maps that showed a well on her property. “Maps. We’re looking for maps.”
“Aye, so I’d think, my lord.”
He repeated it in English to Iris, who was looking over Elowen’s shoulder at the map of the footpath through the Wetlands Centre.
Elowen glanced up at her and said, “I don’t understand how Connor could see such disfigurement in a woman as beautiful.”
Dish knew she referred to the multiple piercings on Iris’s face, something not done on the other side except by certain warriors as mementos of particular kills. “It’s good she doesn’t understand you,” Dish told Elowen.
“She frightens me somewhat, to be sure.”
“Me too,” Dish said and smiled.
“What are you two talking about?” Iris scowled.
“We’re saying that pile of books on the floor might have some maps shoved inside them. Let’s get busy there.”
They found postcards and receipts inside yellowed paperback novels, doodles drawn by Dish and Bronwyn as children, photos of unknown people, coupons clipped from the local newspaper dated to as early as the 1960s. On one such coupon was written a poem in Ildana which Dish set aside after a quick read. It appeared to be nothing more than a musing, but he thought it might become clear later.
At the bottom of the last stack, he picked up a book in a Ziploc bag.
“Halloo!” Bronwyn called from the unlocked front door. He dared not lock it again.
The book was unmistakable. Clyde Pritchard’s infamous Ancient Monuments of Wales for the Intrepid Wanderer. He tucked it between his bum and the seat of the wheelchair, then rolled out to greet Bronwyn.
Celeste appeared to be right. His sister had arrived with a bucket of cleansers, brushes and rubber gloves, and in good cheer.
She gave him a conciliatory kiss on the cheek and Dish wrapped her in a long hug. “Thanks for coming, Wyn. Now, the closet is stuffed with clothes. Perhaps the church can use them?” He pointed Bronwyn to Merryn’s bedroom as Iris walked by carrying the last stack of books to the drawing room.
“Right,” Bronwyn said. “Merryn never threw a single stitch away, I think. She has clothes from the Forties in here.”
When he heard the clothes hangers sliding on the bar, he pulled the book out and dangled it in front of Iris, whispering, “Is this the book Connor gave to the guardian?”
Iris took it reverently and whispered, “Well, fuck me… he traded it to that—that worm that crawled out of the well. Ned was his name. The guardian. Connor gave him the book in exchange for taking him across—to get you.”
Dish opened the Ziploc and flipped through the book. He remembered ordering it from the bookstore near school right before the accident. He found the page he was after, the photo of Lyla Bendbow beside the well stone. The chiseled image of the water horse defined in dark gray relief beneath the runes that ran around the edge. A perfect match to the tattoo on his wrist. But it was the woman who drew his eye, glancing over her shoulder. He would know her anywhere, in any world, in any flesh. Lyleth. The blinding flash of a bulb placed him there, behind a tripod with a camera on it. Clyde and Lyla. She unmasked herself for one moment, and her soul filled his mind.
And all the pieces of his long search for the well fell into place.
The well guardian, Ned, had been in league with Merryn all along. He’d baited Dish into finding that well on the beach, setting him up for his trip across, all planned by Lyleth and Merryn. And once the child was conceived, the hunt for the well ceased as if guarding it was Merryn’s responsibility, not finding it. But why? If Merryn was Old Blood, wouldn’t she want it to be found and opened?