The rowan, the berries still clinging on. He saw shadows jerk back as he moved it to the second point. The air shimmered around it as its magic rose in an invisible veil.
The berries gleamed blood-red under the dying sun. The color of death. The color of birth. The Druids called the rowan the Quickening Tree.
Third, the hawthorn. The tree of the Goddess, of Beltane. The tree that guards the veil between worlds. As he laid it down, it took root and flourished. White blossoms dazzled in the sun. Beneath its boughs, an emptiness lingered in the air. It flickered as something slipped through. A soul, into the land of birth. Before long, another returned.
Fourth, the hazel. He placed nine nuts in a square. The ground shimmered and split beneath them. Water flowed through the crevice, bringing with it a colossal silver salmon, which gulped the nuts down.
Bran touched a finger to its scales. The image vanished. The nuts lay on the ground as he’d placed them.
The hazel was the tree of wisdom.
Fifth, the heather. The haunt of late-summer bees. He heard them humming as they foraged. Saw them gathering nectar, nurturing their brood and the queen in their midst. Infusing their honey with their harmony and magic to produce the most sacred food.
And finally, the oak. He saw the mighty tree, standing proud through the storm. Its leaves clung on until the Cailleach unleashed her full power to tear them from the boughs. The oak marked the death of the year, the end that came before the beginning.
And at the very center of it all, the pivot point around which everything was created, he placed the stone head.
He stood at the top of the circle and concentrated. Closed his eyes and let the energies flow and eddy around him, rippling over his skin like the faintest of breezes.
Something didn’t feel right. He opened his eyes and scanned over his work. It was perfect; he’d done nothing wrong. He concentrated again.
Something was definitely wrong. He felt ever so slightly off balance. A pressure as the energy current built up against one side of the circle. The reason struck him with a palpable cold blow.
He’d chosen the wrong place.
42
Bert planted his feet firmly in the center of his pentagram, then raised his arms to the sky. The stone head filled the clearing around St. Bride’s Well with some strange, alien presence. The ritual drink drove away the biting chill, and the dizziness he’d felt the first time was mingled with elation. This time he would succeed.
The feeling grew more palpable as it spread through his body. An ancient magic, powerful and frightening, filled him. A glimpse of the last time this had been done. He felt the calm, grim confidence and that feeling mingled with his own spirit. When it reached his fingertips and his toes, he opened his eyes.
Light radiated from his mind to fill the circle, spreading out in waves and rebounding from the points of the pentagram. Myriad ripples shimmered all around him. He could feel the light penetrating deep into the earth and rising high into the sky.
With his newfound awareness, he could feel the dark warm earth beneath the frost. Already, life was stirring. Seeds were beginning to germinate, far below the surface. Slowly, slowly, beginning to push upward, long before the first warm days of spring would herald their arrival. He could feel the roots of the trees tentatively drawing up moisture, rising through the trunks and branches to reach the thousands of twigs that would soon burst into life.
The vitality disguised within the sleeping forest coursed through his body and soul. As the power of man combined with that of the earth, he became a part of it all.
He watched the multicolored tendrils flow outward from the stone carving, the perfect likeness of a wolf’s head. Many of the threads had snapped, frayed, withered into dullness, but he’d been right. Some were still intact. They shimmered outward to disappear into the darkness, into the void that was already circling around him.
He reached out with his mind and pulled one of the broken threads. It stretched, flickered, but remained intact. He wrapped it around the void as it prowled past.
It resisted, pulled back from his touch, but the thread held. The pressure against the circle grew slightly heavier.
Bert didn’t let himself feel anything. It was going to be harder this time. It understood. It wouldn’t be fooled twice. He held his mind steady, smooth as a mirror reflecting the light of the earth, and gradually he repaired more threads.
The bonds grew stronger. When he thought he’d done enough, he began to pull. It fought hard, but he didn’t waver.
The wind rose. Branches thrashed about, the leaf litter was swirling around him, but he didn’t break his concentration. A crack as a branch fell, thudding onto the frozen ground. He drew the beast in farther.
It reached the edge of the circle, the point where he’d failed before. Again the resistance was too great.
For the first time, the mirror of his mind began to waver. What would happen when he got it past the barrier? What would stop it simply tearing him to pieces?
His grip was weakening. The void was gaining strength. Another branch fell, this time just feet behind him. He jumped. One of the threads frayed and snapped.
He took a deep, calming breath and the mirror stilled. The light remained intact. He was in control. He was in control and the beast could not harm him. He ignored the broken thread. The others were more than enough.
The raven’s feathers in the pentagram were floating upward. He had the impression that the five pieces of wood were growing. The air shimmered as invisible branches burst through it.
Ravens circled above him. The constant pulse of wings echoed through his mind, together with the throbbing light. He began to feel like he was floating, rising up on the current of sound. He didn’t dare disturb the spell by looking down.
He pulled the threads tight. They steadily drew into the head. He held the beast firmly against the ring of light, and began to intone the binding formula. The words that would imprison it forever.
“Dewch, cysgwch, llonydd am erioed,” he recited through the entire invocation.
It was closer, weaker. But he could sense something else. A discordance, a flicker of disharmony.
Something was wrong.
43
Bran’s heart rate began to surge. His careful preparations were worthless. Everything had to be perfect else the beast would destroy him in an instant. That slight imbalance would magnify until everything he’d achieved would shatter under the pressure.
He forced his emotions under control. He willed his heartbeat and his shaking hands to calm, then swept up all his preparations. He glanced to the west. The sun was almost touching the distant hillside.
He studied the ground in front of the cave. Everywhere he could now perceive that slight undercurrent. A subtle imbalance of the natural energy, all through the area, prickling like a gentle breeze against his skin. Why had he not noticed that before?
With a grudging respect, he realized the cysgod-cerddwr must be somehow responsible. It had masked his awareness. For a while. Bran smiled grimly. He was still more than a match for it.
He would have to go inside the cave. There was no other option. Underground, the currents were masked by the bedrock; he would find the perfectly balanced space he needed. He stepped down into the darkness.
It was cold, unnaturally so. And the darkness was absolute. The rapidly dying light from outside vanished almost immediately. The cysgod-cerddwr was not finished yet.
Bran could sense he was in a cavern, with great space to each side and above. The slight scuffling of his footsteps echoed back from all around him. He slowed his pace, treading carefully.
A sound ahead. Like the scratch of claws on rock. Like a faint intake of breath. He ignored it.
The echoes were coming closer together: the cavern was narrowing. Then he met a rocky wall. He felt his way along it and found the mouth of a new tunnel. Around his height and three paces across. Emanating from it, an acrid chill prickled at his face. He conc
entrated on the swirling eddies he could feel and drew a slow breath. This was the spot.
A faint brush of movement on his cheek. It could have been a flurry of falling dust. He groped for the first of the candles then struck his flint.
The flare of orange was blinding. Then his eyes adjusted and he pivoted, holding the light outwards. It penetrated deep into the gloom. He could see nothing but emptiness.
He forced himself to concentrate as he repeated his preparations then placed the stone head in the center. He removed its woolen covering, careful not to touch the stone, and then stood in the circle and waited.
Sunset passed. The moon rose. Although he could see nothing of the outside world, his heightened senses told him that. The moon would now be a half hand’s width above the eastern horizon, and the sun was well on its way beneath the earth.
It didn’t come.
Bran remained relaxed. Fear would be his undoing. It would come, he knew. He concentrated on the air flowing through his lungs.
A force struck him, almost knocking him from his feet. He could see nothing but blackness, nothing but nothing. But the emptiness was now alive.
He struggled to regain his balance and focused on the flickering lights, the points where he knew they would be. They were still burning. Slowly they reemerged from the abyss.
He stilled his mind and then began to push the beast back, driving it back into the tunnel. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. He began to shake.
Something gave way. The cysgod-cerddwr retreated. Its presence no longer touched him but it entirely surrounded the ring. It couldn’t pass, and neither could Bran leave the circle. There was no way out for either of them.
They waited.
Bran filled his lungs with air, as deep as he could. He exhaled, then breathed again. Three times he repeated the action, feeling a sparkling energy fizzing through his being. Sparks of light like thousands of Dying Stars appeared, emerging from one rocky wall and penetrating the other. The candles burned brighter as the surging energy fed them.
The beast retreated into the cave and Bran propelled it back farther.
He began to sing. The song of the earth, the song of life. The song of all things that are, and were, and will be. The song with which the world was sung into being.
As eons of time flowed through the cave, an endless night was shattered by a burst of light. A dimly seething primeval sea gave up the first living things. Blasts of fire erupted from the ground. A Fiery Star plummeted. Flame spread across the world, and new seeds kindled from the charred remains.
Bran felt alive, in a way he’d never felt before. He knew what it meant to be a part of the world. The legacy of all time burst into his soul and he longed to scream with ecstasy.
Then he saw her. The Goddess, as dazzling as the summer ocean, as delicate as the nascent moon. She turned red as blood as her essence surged through the soul of the world. Through its rivers, lakes, and seas. Through the veins of man and beast. Through the stems of plant and tree.
At her side, her son, the Horned God of the Green. As Bran beheld him, he saw within him the entirety of the life that the Goddess had birthed. He looked on for an eternity as countless lives grew and flourished, then withered and died as the Goddess transformed into her third and final face. He watched their deaths seed lives anew.
He saw a hawk seize a finch midair. Its brood of chicks tear greedily at the still-warm flesh.
He saw the King Stag drag himself away from the field, head held low, blood dripping from his wounds, as the victor bellowed and charged toward the waiting hinds.
Her final aspect, black and terrible. He could feel her daring him to look upon her. He met her eyes with confidence. A terrible, unconquerable, indefinable power, he felt himself falling into the pools of swirling blackness.
He steadied his balance. Centered and focused, he gazed on her face. She nodded, a slow smile on her face.
Life. Death. They were one and the same. He realized her real purpose behind the Clenched Fist.
This truth locked in his heart, he turned to the darkness and drew the cysgod-cerddwr toward him. He pulled on the threads snaking out from his mind to entwine it. It was taken by surprise and he made rapid progress.
Then it began to fight. He got it to the edge of the circle, but his energy was weakening. The effort was too much. He hung on.
One of the bonds snapped. A candle was extinguished in an explosion of darkness. The circle of light was broken.
It was over. He’d lost. His mind was breached, his faith wounded. The cysgod-cerddwr knew that at once. And instead of struggling, it attacked.
44
Bert repeated the entire formula again, but the discord grew more palpable. Had he remembered one of the words wrong?
The void moved nearer. What was missing?
The mirror of light began to waver. The darkness pressed inward.
The words sounded unbidden from the pool of his mind. A skylark sings in the face of danger.
He saw again the bird exploding up from under his feet that long ago morning, what seemed a lifetime ago. And the answer came to him. He was meant to sing the ritual.
His grandfather had never told him that, but in his heart he knew it was right. It had been forgotten over the years, but the answer had somehow managed to find him.
His voice was harsh—he’d never sung in his life—but his song gained its own momentum. He sang the song of the lark, the wind in the heather, the scent of the moorland air. The first flakes of snow in winter, the swallow swooping overhead on its thousand-mile journey, the perpetual sound of grazing. The foraging bee, the kite rising on a thermal, a pair of lambs at their mother’s udder, the shepherd on his watch. The song of the moors, the eternal cycle of life.
Carried on the notes of his song, he flew back through eons of time. He saw generations come and go. Men built dwellings of wattle and turf, precarious on the fell side. They watched their sheep, they grew old and died. The heather sprouted, flourished, withered, and sprouted. Battles were fought and lost. Settlements were razed and rebuilt. A babe was born in a rush of blood.
As he gazed at Janet’s exhausted face, as her eyes turned toward his, at last he felt peace. It hadn’t gone wrong. It was the way it was meant to be.
He saw that old ewe again, sent to the butcher all those months ago.
“That ewe with the broken horn’s her daughter.”
“That’s nice. That means there’s something left of her when she goes, doesn’t it?”
Thomas had realized that, better than himself.
He reached out and took Janet’s hand. Forty years of guilt and failure were swept away in a heartbeat as she squeezed his fingers and smiled. He finally understood.
A man in a raven-feathered cloak, strong and wise. His cloak handed to a beautiful, flame-haired woman. He saw a line of people, kneeling, looking up in smoldering hatred as blood dripped from their many wounds. Behind them, a village was burning.
But the people always returned. Like the sheep, they would always find their way home.
And so it went on, the ebb and flow of life, until it finished with a young boy sitting on his grandfather’s knee.
The song died away. But it remained, echoing through the hills. The song of silence. The song of life. The song of eternity.
With a sudden implosion, the darkness was gone. The ground quaked and the stone head tumbled into the spring.
Bert slumped to the ground, exhausted. The transcendent light left him. He looked through the water into the beast’s eyes. The malevolent glitter was at once terrifying and utterly exhilarating.
He’d done it.
45
The cysgod-cerddwr hurtled toward Bran, just as he’d wanted a heartbeat before. It broke straight through the circle. The momentum knocked him off balance. Terror took over.
He flung his arms up as he fell and felt something slash into his arms and face. A warm stickiness began to run into his eyes and mouth. It caught in
his throat as he tried to gasp a breath.
There was no light now. The blackness had overwhelmed it. Whether the candles still burned, it no longer mattered. Teeth sank deep into his arm and his side but he was barely aware of the pain. The beast began to shake him.
As even that began to fade, he became dimly aware of something else. A rush of air on his face.
Wings.
He dropped to the ground. The raven squawked as it attacked and the beast turned its fury toward it.
The bird tore at its eyes, his beak gouging at the sharp blue orbs. His wings flapped furiously and the beast roared.
Bran’s mind grasped for the remaining lights, still burning despite everything, and pulled himself back to the battle. With the last of his mental strength he threw more bands of energy around the beast. Preoccupied with the assailing raven, it didn’t react until too late. It was ensnared in the center of the circle.
Bran forced his pain into the recesses of his mind. The beast thrashed and writhed. The roof of the cave began to fall.
He was shaking, mind and body. With the last shreds of his strength, he forced the cysgod-cerddwr inward, towards the stone head. He could feel blood pouring from his nose and mouth as he struggled to breathe.
With one last desperate effort, he screamed and forced the beast backward, downward, inward. Stone and dust fell all around, choking his lungs and stinging his eyes. He was dimly aware of a deep, violent roar in his ears. Then he collapsed.
After one breath he forced himself to his knees. Where was it? He looked around in a daze.
Gone.
Stone and dust were still raining all around him but he stared toward the stone head. Its eyes flickered and pulsed. They were alive.
The Wolf of Allendale Page 18