To Carry the Horn

by Karen Myers

  He was unarmed in the baths and unable to run, so he quickly tried to calm himself enough to assume the glamour he’d been trying to make habitual. He changed the clothing to something drab and tried to shape his body language to fit a servant. At the last moment, as footsteps approached, he remembered Isolda’s injunction to keep his arms tucked in to shorten his reach to match his appearance.

  He grabbed a stack of towels and started to lay them out, as though delivering them. Madog turned the corner and glared at him. George straightened, then bowed.

  Don’t walk, he told himself. The limp will give you away. He’s armed and dangerous. Concentrate on the glamour, if you drop the glamour, you’re dead. “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” he said.

  “Been here long?” Madog said, with studied disinterest.

  “No, sir. Just came in the other way to clean up after one of the gentlemen.” He moved about carefully, hiding the limp, and put the towels he had snatched back into their places on the shelves. I could use some of Rhian’s knives about now, he thought, for all the good it would probably do me.

  Out of the corner of his eyes he could see Madog looking at him with suspicion, but then he could hardly be expected to know the faces of everyone in Gwyn’s establishment. Madog spun on his heels without a word and left.

  George retrieved his cane but concealed it with the glamour as he carefully walked to the rear door Madog had used. It took forever to walk smoothly without the telltale limp. By the time he opened it and looked outside, they were both long gone.

  Madog shook his head, disgusted with himself as he walked back from the balineum to the manor. Well, he thought, what do you expect when your tools are the inept and the deranged?

  What a botched job of checking for listeners. Did he hear anything? There was something off about him, like a glamour, but who would it have been, if so? How would they know about the meeting? What did they hear?

  He glanced at the huntsman’s house as he walked by. Damn complication, that fellow, he thought. The mad one wants to kill him, but he wants to kill everyone, and look what a lousy job he did, bad enough to make things harder for my plans but not enough to stop him hunting. I should never have let him try the ambush, but after that fellow got rid of Owen the Leash—complacent idiot—he had to go. I need the control at the end of the great hunt, if this is going to work.

  We’re going to do it my way now. It’ll be easy to make them think of him as Iolo’s killer. Just point them in the right direction and provide the evidence. The mad one can do that for me. No one will believe a human in this, I don’t care what lineage he claims. If they keep him, I’ll have cut off much of his support. If they don’t, anyone else will be easier to topple. I’ll be there at the end, and the mad one, too, if I can keep him under control that long. Too sharp a weapon not to use, but such a hard one to handle.

  It’s only three more days. We can stay hidden that long, surely.

  Such weak tools, but it makes them easier to manipulate, at least the sane ones. Pompous Gwythyr gave me the way in, and making myself indispensable to Creiddylad was hardly a challenge. Any man who seemed to respect her despite her history could probably have done it. What a pair they must’ve made, way back when. It amused him to make the two of them, bitter enemies now, into unaware mutual allies of his cause. It would horrify them, he chuckled, if they ever had the brains to work it out.

  Creiddylad thinks it’s all about her—the death of Iolo and the discomfiture of Gwyn. She thinks it can stop there, and not kill anyone in her family. But she’s dreaming—her nephew’s already dead, and more to come. I wonder if she’ll recognize her role in it, when it’s all over.

  Gwythyr’s at least straightforward. He doesn’t ask about my methods. He just wants Gwyn dead. I bet he wouldn’t care that I’m using Creiddylad to do it, might even please him more.

  Why don’t they ever wonder what’s in it for me? Why do they think I’m willing to do their dirty work? Who do they think will take over this domain when Gwyn’s gone? Edern has no standing and he’s far from home. Creiddylad can’t do it, it’s all personal for her. Gwyn’s father will never grant it to Gwythyr. Why can’t they see this?

  They’re too old, they’ve had it their own way too long. I’ll shut the ways and hold it tight, just as I’ve done all along for my own lands.

  They disdain the younger ones like me, these old ones. Let them slumber in ignorance just a little while longer, until they’re forced to recognize a new power in the western lands. I’ve kept myself hidden long enough. Annwn and the great hunt will give me standing like nothing else. They’ll have to come to me, then.

  George hobbled in to Gwyn’s council room when his knock was acknowledged. “Good, you’re both here,” he said, as Ceridwen looked up from her conversation with Gwyn.

  “Didn’t I tell you to stay off that leg?” she said.

  “Wish I could,” he said, “believe me.”

  He limped clumsily over to the table and collapsed into a chair. “I have news…”

  After hearing his account of Madog’s conversation, Gwyn and Ceridwen sat for a minute or two, rearranging their theories about the enemy alliance into a new shape.

  Ceridwen was the first to break the silence, with an almost random observation. “However the palisade was breached, I’m sure Creiddylad didn’t do it herself. Between that, and the ability of Scilti and the other one to get through it, I’ll bet some part of her essence was tapped without her knowledge. That’s the only thing that makes sense, magically. I think she’s guiltless in this, at least.”

  Gwyn looked grateful, fleetingly, but he shook his head. “She still wishes us harm and can’t be trusted. Edgewood’s connected to Madog’s domain by this conversation, and she’s kept that hidden. He may be the driving force, but she’s his ally.”

  “You were right, last week, about Scilti,” George said to Gwyn. “You and Edern must’ve scared him silly at the inn.”

  “That’s good, but I didn’t expect it to rebound on Rhian.”

  “No one could’ve foreseen that,” George said. “I think their theory that this morning’s attack was just bad luck is probably right.”

  “This is a complicated alliance, and they’re unraveling, but they’ve really only lost one weapon today” Ceridwen said thoughtfully.

  George said, “Don’t forget Owen the Leash. They had a plan for him.”

  “Yes, but we still don’t know who this other fellow is, inside our home. He’s a knife looking for a victim.”

  Gwyn sighed. “All we can do is hold out for three more days, and hope to identify him. Meanwhile, I hold myself responsible for not looking into Madog more when he first appeared in my sister’s train. What do we know?” he asked Ceridwen.

  “The only one of that name I could find came to this new world long after we did, eight or nine hundred years ago.”

  “Why did we never meet him then?”

  “They say he settled with the Indians, to the west,” she said.

  Gwyn paused. “Could this be the source of the barrier to the west?”

  “Can’t be, it was there before he came, if this is the same person.”

  “We’ve been fools to ignore this,” Gwyn said.

  Privately George agreed, but maintained a discreet silence.

  Gwyn rose. “I must tell my brother what we’ve learned and seek his forbearance until after the hunt, so that we can capture them all. I don’t know if he’ll agree to wait, now that the worst is known about his son.”

  “Wait a minute,” George said. “So, our only plan is to wait?”

  “And not to reveal what we know.”

  CHAPTER 32

  George sat at Angharad’s table on Thursday and helped himself to a second piece of beef pasty. The crust was crisp and flaky around the meat and vegetables in their savory gravy. His leg ached with the morning’s hunt exertions, but he was beginning to regain his appetite.

  He asked Angharad about the hunt. “So, how was it fro
m the perspective of the field?”

  “I overheard many conversations. More were in your favor, and Gwyn’s, than on Tuesday. Many were surprised just to see you out at all.”

  “It’s not so bad, today,” he said, kneading his thigh. “Thanks for the cane. It got a lot of use yesterday.”

  She acknowledged his words. “I thought Iolo’s sticks would be too short.”

  “As indeed they were,” he said.

  She began to clear some of the plates from the table.

  She said, as she moved about, “Madog was there this morning, smooth as silk. He’s invisible when he wants to be, but always watching. I can’t say I’m surprised to find him a major force against Gwyn, but I have it in me to feel sorry for Creiddylad, once she realizes how she’s been used.”

  “She’s a case of ‘be careful what you wish for,’ I think. That much malice doesn’t get my sympathy,” he said, “nor such treason to her own family.”

  She nodded. “Poor Edern, confirmation at last of what he’s always feared.”

  She sat back down. “Scilti seems to be gone for good, then.”

  “That’s what we’re hoping.” He paused before taking another bite. “Didn’t I tell you? I stopped by the inn on my way in and spoke to Huw Bongam. No trace of Maonirn at all, and he’s been gone overnight. They’re all very gloomy over there, fearing the worst.”

  George finished his last few bites in silence. He leaned down and picked up the bag he’d brought with him, slung over his back, when he rode in.

  “I confess I had ulterior motives in inviting myself to lunch today, though the charm of your company needs no excuse.” George smiled at Angharad.

  “And just how may I help you?” she said, falling into the game.

  “I need to test my tools, for Saturday.” He opened the bag and drew out the oliphant that he’d taken away from the cupboard in the huntsman’s office, and her face grew serious. “I couldn’t wind this where the hounds could hear me, but I have to try it out for myself before I need to use it for real.”

  “Also, this,” he said, reaching behind his vest and pulling out his revolver and placing it on the table in front of him.

  “Ceridwen says gunpowder won’t work, but this isn’t the same gunpowder she’s used to, she’s out of date. I need to try it, but if I’m right, it’ll make a loud noise, and I didn’t want to let the wrong people know about it at the manor.”

  At Angharad’s suggestion, George stood between the kilns, aiming his gun at the soft dirt.

  “Cover your ears,” he told her.

  He had no idea whether or not this would work, but his belief in the universe’s sense of humor weighted the scale for him in the direction of failure. He cocked the hammer back and pulled the trigger. Click.

  He sighed. “That’ll teach me to doubt Ceridwen.”

  He removed the cartridge and showed Angharad the dimple in the primer made by the firing pin. He couldn’t tell if the primer had gone off, but certainly the gunpowder hadn’t been ignited.

  “What does it look like before firing?” Angharad wanted to know. He showed her an unfired cartridge and explained how they worked.

  “Would you like to take it apart for further tests?” she asked.

  They walked to her woodworking shop just a few steps away. With two pairs of pliers, George pulled the bullet from the case and spilled the smokeless powder into a dish. He spread it in a thin line on the plate and put a lighter to one end of it. The powder burned very slowly, almost like an inert substance, rather than quickly with a tall bright flame.

  He made a mock ceremonial gift of the steel-jacketed bullet and brass cartridge case to Angharad, then reloaded the intact cartridge and replaced the gun under his vest. “I guess having one fewer cartridge now isn’t going to matter much, but I had to know.”

  He walked to the door. “Let’s try the oliphant.”

  “I wanted to see this again, and compare,” George told Angharad, standing in front of her painting of Iolo wearing the oliphant slung across his back.

  What will it sound like, he wondered. Low and slow, like a cow’s horn?

  Raising it with both hands he put the strange mouthpiece to his lips and pursed them as for a simple straight hunting horn. He took a deep breath and blew.

  It took a second or two to adjust his mouth and create the right vibration to generate sound, and then it came, echoing slowly from all directions in the enclosed space of her workshop, as if the voice of the earth itself rose straight from the ground and gained volume from some agency other than his own breath, filling the room.

  Angharad’s dogs howled and the hairs on his arms rose in sympathy. The breath seemed to last forever, and he felt the horned man rise to continue it. He couldn’t break it off until his lungs had emptied, and then he spent the next few moments pulling the horned man back.

  When he could speak again, he said, “It sounds like the end of the world.” She nodded solemnly.

  “Did Iolo hunt the hounds with this, like a silver horn?”

  “No, he hunted by voice for the great hunt. The oliphant announces the start of the hunt, the mort, and the ‘all home’ when everyone returns.”

  “Did Iolo bear the horned man, too?”

  “Not that I know of. You must make your own path with this.”

  The dogs began barking again, this time to announce a visitor pounding on the workshop door.

  It was Huw Bongam. “We’ve found Maonirn. That bastard Scilti slit his throat and buried him deep in the hay loft.”

  He has plenty of nerve, I’ll give him that, Gwyn thought, while he waited for Creiddylad to be found. Madog had just left the council chamber.

  How could I not have realized what a facade that was, he wondered. I must be losing the habit of focusing on the younger ones, a dangerous practice I’m going to have to reform. No wonder he thinks he can get away with anything, no one pays enough attention to him to disabuse him of the notion.

  Madog had stood there in front of him, with an affable look of concern on his face, and told him he was sure, absolutely sure, that George had had a hand in Iolo’s murder. “Search his house,” he said, “You’ll find a weapon. He had something to do with it.”

  Gwyn was confident that Idris understood the game being played by the look on his face when Gwyn sent him off to the huntsman’s house, but Madog didn’t notice. He took Gwyn’s urbane thanks with unconvincing modesty and left, having planted his barb.

  Creiddylad knocked on the open door and entered.

  “You sent for me?” she asked.

  “Sister,” he said, “I wondered if you could help me understand more about yesterday’s events. Do you know anything at all about Rhian’s attacker?”

  He put it that way, instead of “our invader,” to see if she would be more motivated to honesty by a reminder of the family she was betraying.

  “I told you already. I’ve never met him.”

  Truth, perhaps, but she didn’t say she knew nothing about him.

  “How do you suppose he got through the palisade’s warding effect?”

  Ah, that struck something. She looked uneasy about that.

  “How should I know?” she said.

  Gwyn thought, it’s her magic, she should know how to circumvent it. He tried a different tack.

  “I was just speaking with Madog. Remind me, how did you meet him?”

  “He came to me when I needed him, a long time ago.” She surprised Gwyn with a lonely look of remembrance.

  “Where’s he from?”

  “He showed up one day and stayed to serve me. I’ve never seen his home. You know how it is with the younger ones, he’s probably embarrassed by it. He was too shy to meet you here until just a few years ago.”

  That rang true. This was the vain self-centered woman he remembered. It wouldn’t be hard to use her, if you wanted to devote enough time to the project.

  Gwyn made one more attempt to reach her, to give her a chance to restore her fidelit
y to the family. Softly, he said, “Sister, why are you trying to cause trouble here?”

  She looked him straight in the eyes, fully committed. “It’s not me. Look to that human huntsman you’re so proud to claim as kin. He’s no kin of mine.”

  Idris returned, putting two clawed sticks, like the ones thought to have been used on Iolo, onto the council table. “These were in the desk in the study,” he told Gwyn.

  “You see?” Her voice rose. “He did it, just like Madog feared.”

  Gwyn dismissed her. After she left his eyes closed in sorrow and he bowed his head for several moments. She was no sister of his any longer. Idris stood by quietly.

  He raised his head again, his face smooth. “Interesting gambit, don’t you think?” he said, pointing his chin at the two weapons.

  “This is absurd, you know. George was there when the bloodhounds were searching, and they never identified him.”

  “Madog and Creiddylad probably don’t know all the details of that, or have dismissed our understanding of it.”

  “Then there’s the problem that Alun cleaned up the house. His first loyalty would’ve been to Iolo. There’s no way something this trivially hidden would have escaped his attention, or our knowledge,” Idris said.

  “Yes, it’s not very respectful of our intelligence, is it? I feel rather… underestimated,” Gwyn said, with a wry smile.

  “And, of course, the most obvious problem is that we, at least, know Cernunnos has taken an interest in George. He could hardly be a less likely suspect.” Gwyn sighed.

  “So, what will you do?” Idris said. “They seem determined to push this story.”

  “What can I do? If I don’t uphold the accusation, lend it some apparent credence, I’ll give myself away to them. I’ll reveal that I know too much.” He poked at the clawed sticks in front of him with a finger. “George will expect me to behave differently in public. He’ll know I don’t truly believe it.”

  “Will he? Are you sure?” Idris asked.

  George sat alone in his study, in the dark. Alun was out on some errand of his own, not having expected him to return before dinner ended.