“What do you need from me?” Cade said.
“If you would light the torches first and then fill this with water from the spring, I will prepare myself.” Taliesin pulled a small wooden bowl from his satchel and handed it to Cade.
With a last glance at Taliesin, Cade set to work. He had the torches flaming with a few strikes of flint and was able to slide Caledfwlch into its sheath as he no longer needed its light. Taliesin had already leaned his own staff against the wall beside the doorway through which they’d entered the cavern. In the farthest reaches of the cave, the spring welled up into a hole in the rocky floor. It bubbled merrily, a counterpoint to the intense and ominous atmosphere bearing down on Cade. Despite his growing concerns about this entire endeavor, Cade brought the full bowl back to Taliesin and set it carefully on the table in front of him.
Taliesin waved Cade away and focused on the bowl. “You are here to rescue me if I can’t save myself. If all goes well, a way to defeat what we face will appear to me from within the sacred vessel and renew my sight at the same time. This might take some time, or if the gods have forgiven me, my vision might return to me in a powerful rush. Regardless, do not let me touch the water.”
“All right,” Cade said, not understanding, but deciding he didn’t need to in this instance—and perhaps didn’t want to. He moved to lean against the wall next to Taliesin’s staff.
Taliesin poured the water from the small bowl into the larger one before stowing the smaller one again in his pack. Then he pulled his belt knife from his sheath, held up both hands as if in prayer, and with the knife sliced through the fat portion of his left hand below his thumb. He began to speak out loud, but in words Cade didn’t understand. The drops of blood dripped one, two, three, four, five into the water in front of him. After stuffing a cloth into his fist to stop the flow, Taliesin leaned forward to stare over the bowl, still chanting in that unknown tongue.
Cade watched him for a while, but then he began to fidget. He loosened his shoulders. He crossed and re-crossed his ankles. It had never occurred to him that this would take so long or that Taliesin’s magic could be so boring. Still, Taliesin continued to chant. Then Cade realized that Taliesin’s voice was growing louder, echoing with a growing cacophony off the walls. The volume increased moment by moment until Cade wanted to clap his hands over his ears to shut out the sound.
The fire in the torches dimmed, flared, and then dimmed again. A wind began to blow, circling around Taliesin, who only leaned ever more forward over the bowl. Cade was trying to pay attention to everything at once: the wind, the torches, the horrible, overwhelming sound, and then a growing darkness that seemed to rise out of the stones at their feet like a fog rolling onto the beach from the sea or over a mountain meadow. It welled up so quickly, Cade feared it would obscure Taliesin from his sight, and he took a step forward, afraid for his friend.
Taliesin had closed his eyes, and his pointy nose was within a hair’s-breadth of the water. Cade took another step towards him, watching him intently. He was holding still, however, and Cade was loath to disrupt him before he’d finished his work. Cade stood, feet spread and braced against the screaming wind, while Taliesin’s chanting continued to fill the room. Cade could barely stay on his feet.
“Boom!” The torches exploded in their sconces, throwing flames in all directions, and the walls themselves caught fire, for all that they were made of stone. Cade knew it wasn’t possible, but he’d seen the impossible before and had been forced to accept it. He could accept this—and ignore it—because it was a small matter compared to saving Taliesin. Cade leapt toward the center of the room, grasped Taliesin around the waist, and pulled him away from the bowl.
Cade feared Taliesin might fight him, but instead he collapsed the instant his connection to the bowl was broken. The bard was so tall, Cade nearly overbalanced at the sudden shift in weight. As Cade straightened, adjusting Taliesin in his arms, a dark shape, thicker than the fog on the floor, rose from the water in the bowl. It had no more form than a cloud or a trail of smoke, but as Cade watched, transfixed, it took the form of a man, hooded and cloaked.
The being grew larger, rising to the ceiling of the room, and then the wind of before began whirling around the creature instead of Taliesin, accompanied by a rumbling and shaking that cascaded a pile of stones at the far end of the room to the floor. The water from the little brook shot upwards in a geyser, soaking the stone around the hole.
If he’d had breath, it would have been coming fast and hard. As it was, Cade staggered backwards with his burden, and then because he feared he wouldn’t be able to flee the shadow in time, bent and threw Taliesin over his left shoulder. The bard hung boneless. The shaking continued, along with the wind which had become a piercing shriek. Cade grabbed Taliesin’s staff and held it out, as if that might help ward off the evil force. Then, as the shadow loomed larger above him, he fled.
As soon as he crossed the threshold into the tunnel, the fire behind him went out, as if extinguished in one mighty breath. But who—or what—had done the breathing, Cade didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He ran up the passageway. Trying not to stumble in the total darkness, Cade mumbled the words to conjure the light at the end of Taliesin’s staff, words that he’d heard Taliesin say so many times: caith solas ar. Cade didn’t expect it to work, but despite his lack of faith, the staff lit.
The shadow dogged his heels. Only the little light on the end of Taliesin’s staff kept Cade from being consumed by it. The journey upwards seemed to take four times longer than the one down to the cavern, but just when Cade thought he must have turned the wrong way in that initial darkness, he reached the chamber that held the Christian bones. Once he entered that room, the mountain began to shake even harder.
Cade’s legs trembled with every step, not because he was afraid (though he was), but because the stones were giving way beneath his feet. The earth’s motion catapulted the bones out of their resting places one by one. A skull hit Cade in the head and he raised the arm that held Taliesin’s staff, prepared to defend himself and Taliesin against all the forces that might come against them, even the bones. Meanwhile, the man who lay on the table in the center of the room remained as he had been, undisturbed. But as Cade passed the table at a wobbling run, a tremor shook the wooden box, and it fell to the floor.
Terrified that its contents had broken, Cade swung around in time to see the precious cup roll out of its protective cloth and right itself in the center of the room. The shaking grew stronger still, and the cup rocked on its base, but it didn’t tip. Even though Cade didn’t want to leave the room and its unattended cup, he retreated, backing through the far doorway into the passage beyond, which would take them back up to Dinas Bran.
The instant his left foot sought for purchase on the uneven stones in the entryway, the black shadow arrived in the far doorway opposite him and surged forward. Cade opened his mouth in a silent scream, knowing that he needed to turn and run but unable to move. But when the shadow reached the spot where the cup rested, it drew up short. The shrieking wind grew louder and the blackness loomed from floor to ceiling in the back half of the room, yet it was as if an invisible wall prevented it from continuing.
The being fell backwards, like a wave crashing against a cliff wall and then retreating, and disappeared from the room. Thinking the threat had ended, Cade took a step towards the cup on the floor. He wanted to return it to its box. Before he could take another step, however, the blackness filled the doorway again and thrust towards him. Fear shaped in darkness and threat filled his ears in a wild shriek, but another appeal pushed it away.
Run!
Cade ran, Taliesin bobbing on his back like a sack of turnips, and he took the stairs three at a time. When he was a step from the top, a great crashing of rock sounded behind him, and he allowed himself one glance back. A mountain of stone that even he might have trouble penetrating blocked the doorway to the tomb.
The farther he ran from the hidden chambers, t
he quieter the rumblings, until he reached the last cave, below the castle’s cellar. Cade entered the chamber warily but was met with silence.
“Geraint!” Cade tilted his head towards the opening in the cellar floor.
A heartbeat later, the familiar face appeared above him, reminding Cade of why he trusted Geraint with his life. Geraint didn’t ask questions, just reached through the hole for Taliesin, then his staff, and finally Cade, who boosted himself onto his stomach in the opening, and rolled onto his back on the cool stones of the cellar floor.
Geraint crouched over Taliesin, his ear to his chest. “He lives.”
“I’d hoped as much.” Cade didn’t move. It wasn’t so much that he was tired, but that he was mentally spent.
“He does live.” Taliesin’s voice cracked over the words.
Cade sat up and crawled the few feet that separated him from Taliesin, whose eyes revealed an inwardness that marked him as someone who’d lived through what no man should ever have had to see. “Can you tell us what you saw in the water?”
“What supports the world that it lies not in waste around us?
And if the world should fail, on what would it fall?
Who will uphold it when it descends into decay?
Again the circle closes.”
The words meant nothing to Cade, and Taliesin didn’t explain them. Instead, he answered Cade’s question. “I saw the long cloud of war. It’s a black shadow that will cover the land from mountain to sea.”
“I saw a shadow too.” Cade studied Taliesin’s face. “The shadow, I think. It rose up from the water and followed us as I fled with you.”
Taliesin’s jaw clenched. “What happened to it?”
“It never left the room with the Christian bones,” Cade said, not ready to speak of all that he’d seen. Not just yet.
Taliesin closed his eyes and his muscles relaxed, the lines on his face smoothing to that of a youth. “I remember nothing of what happened, other than my visions. I suppose it isn’t too much of a stretch to think that you saved my life?”
“You told me not to let you touch the water,” Cade said. “So I didn’t.”
“I do remember wind and fire,” Taliesin said.
“The mountain shook around me, much as it did when Rhun and I searched for traces of those demons at Deganwy,” Cade said. “Rocks fell behind me as I ran. They collapsed in front of the ossuary door. They didn’t stop until I reached the fort and found it calm.”
“I felt no rumbling,” Geraint said. “All was quiet here.”
Taliesin pushed up onto one elbow. “Then perhaps we still have time. Whether the gods have blessed me with the renewed gift of foresight, or it is only a temporary thing, I feel the weight of my gift pressing on me, like a great ache behind my eyes.” He took Cade’s shoulder in one hand and shook him slightly, so urgent was his warning. “The gods themselves have taken sides in the coming battle.”
“Mabon,” Geraint said. “And Camulos.”
“And Arianrhod, and Arawn, and Llyr, and Gofannon, and even my own patron, Gwydion,” Taliesin said. “All are arrayed in the unseen world, with their ancient grudges and shifting allegiances. We face the Saxons, yes, but I fear more than they, we fight our own selves and contest the essence of what it means to be Welsh.”
Cade scrubbed his face with his hands. “Let’s get you up. We can continue this discussion after you’ve rested.”
“I will never rest again,” Taliesin said, “though I close my eyes in sleep.”
“I will speak with the lords of Powys, Ceredigion and Gwent,” Cade said. “I will force them to listen.”
“And meanwhile, we’ll find out what the Saxons are up to,” Geraint said, doing a good imitation of Bedwyr’s growl. “We will find them, and meet them, and let that be an end to it.”
__________
The Pendragon’s Champions, the next novella in The Last Pendragon Saga, is available at Amazon!
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The Pendragon's Quest (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 4) Page 11