The Ways of Winter

by Karen Myers

  “That’s the intruder. Stop him.”

  A flung knife failed to penetrate when it hit his leg but it made him stumble on the slippery floor, and when he got up again, they were almost on him. Go, he told Cloudie, and he felt them use the way. He collapsed it behind them, then turned his attention to his attackers and drew his saber.

  There were two guards and one other, directing them. George put his back to the wall and tried to hold them both off. He’d improved since he first started training under Hadyn, but compared to these professionals, it was a losing proposition.

  The leader stood off to the side and commented, “I didn’t believe him when he said we had an intruder. How about that?” He leaned on the wall casually as George tried to break through the two swordsmen facing him.

  George tried to blitz one of them and lunged, slashing him deeply across his chest, but it exposed him to the other guard who brought the flat of his blade down on George’s head. He dropped to the ground, his sword clattering out of his hand. He could feel the kicks in his ribs as he tried to get up, until another head blow flattened him completely.

  Edern woke in the middle of the night to the sound of Seething Magma’s bell.

  He joined the group in the conservatory, where Mag was trying to make them understand something important.

  Eluned, in a long woolen robe, raised her hand. “Silence, all of you.” When she got the response she looked for, she turned to Mag. “Please, start again.”

  Mag drew an iron cage, and added a few next to it.

  “Cells, a prison,” Eluned said.

  One knock.

  She took the crown, Rhys’s symbol, and put it on top of the cells.

  “Rhys is prisoner there.”

  One knock.

  Mag grasped the collar, the gray fabric, and the toy wolf and held them together. She moved them through space to the cells.

  Eluned said, “Cloudie made a way to the prison and brought George and the wolf cub.”

  One knock.

  Mag paused, as if trying to figure out how best to explain.

  She picked up three toy swords and put them on another part of the drawing.

  “Three guards?” Eluned asked.

  One knock.

  The collar, the wolf, and the cloth were marched in one direction on top of the cells, and the three swords were marched in the opposite direction until they met.

  Eluned was silent. That didn’t need a translation.

  Mag dropped the collar with the swords and took the toy wolf and the gray cloth back out. The three swords and the collar went out the other side. That didn’t need a translation either.

  “Is he alive?” Edern asked.

  One knock.

  “Hurt?”

  One knock.

  “Can you speak to him?” Rhodri asked.

  Two knocks.

  They looked at each other in dismay.

  Edern thought, this is what we all feared, that George would be caught or killed and nothing any the better for it. Although he’s saved the people here, he remembered, destroying the barrier way. But at what a cost.

  He looked to the house servants, woken by the bell as he was and standing clustered in the doorway. “Please have a pallet made up for me here. I’ll be spending the night.”

  CHAPTER 21

  George woke with a cry, the soles of his feet still stinging from the rods which had just pounded them. He was disoriented, his head throbbing and his vision blurred. He was stripped to the waist and barefoot, but for some reason his hands were free. His ribs were sore, and he thought some might be cracked.

  He tried to stand up and discovered he was chained around the neck. It took him a moment to realize he had to move closer to the wall to create enough slack to make it possible to rise.

  His skin felt dirty, slimy, from the floor. He blinked in the light of the torches along the wall. This wasn’t a cell, it was too large. More like a workroom.

  As his vision cleared a bit, he saw Madog seated comfortably, poking idly through his possessions lying in a heap on the table next to him. He raised a hand to his neck as if to feel the chain, but he was actually trying to find out if Angharad’s pendant was still there. It was, undetectable except to him. He found the comfort that gave him out of all proportion to the knowledge that it was of no use to him here, that his remaining time was surely limited.

  He looked around the stone walls and saw the gleam of equipment in the dark, things he shied away from examining too closely.

  Madog spoke, with that bland voice that George loathed. “Well. Good to see you again, huntsman. I’ve been wanting a chat with you.

  “Madog.” George nodded his head civilly.

  “I don’t know if you’ve met my Scilti, or not. He’s certainly heard a lot about you.”

  George looked over at the man who had commanded the guards last night. The man glanced back, with a crooked smile, anticipating a private pleasure.

  “In fact,” Madog said, “my people have been telling me lots of interesting things. I wonder if they’re true? Let’s find out, shall we?”

  He waved a hand at Scilti and two guards grabbed his wrists and held his arms out and forced him to the end of his chain, despite his struggles. He watched Scilti pull on a pair of leather gloves.

  Madog spoke again, and George turned his attention back to him. “For example, they tell me that it was you who destroyed my hidden way by the palisade. Is that so?”

  Before he could reply, Scilti walked behind him and drove his fist into one of his kidneys. It exploded in pain. George’s knees buckled but he recovered enough to stay standing.

  “So,” Madog said, “was that you?”

  “What’s wrong?” George said, “You lose that page in the manual?”

  Madog didn’t get the joke, but it didn’t matter. Scilti pounded the other kidney and George sagged. If he fell forward, he would choke on his chain so he shuffled his feet under him and tried to stay up.

  Madog said, “Let’s take that as a ‘yes.’ You’re going to teach me how.”

  George shook his head.

  Madog laughed. “Oh, Scilti can be very persuasive. He likes it when I let him ask questions for me.”

  George tried to brace himself for another blow but it didn’t come.

  “And then there’s the other matter,” Madog said. “How did you get here?”

  George muttered, “I flew like a little butterfly.”

  Madog shook his head. “Pointless, I’m afraid. You’ll see.”

  He stood up and headed for the door. As he passed by Scilti he said, “Nothing too permanent yet. I may need to pick his brains for a while.” He closed the door behind him.

  Scilti advanced and began to work him over carefully, scientifically, laying bruise on bruise with concentrated pleasure. He said nothing. The only sounds George could hear were the blows he was taking, and those he heard both inside and out, his flesh resonating to the thuds. Sometimes the sound was wet. It wasn’t long before his legs refused to hold him up altogether, and he sagged in the arms of the two guards until they dropped him to the floor. He never felt it.

  George woke some hours later, every inch of his torso throbbing. He was so stiff he wasn’t sure he could move at all, but eventually he was able to get his arms, which had escaped most of the punishment, into a position where he could push himself upright, sitting. Standing up was beyond consideration for now. Getting his head level helped make the spinning less of a problem.

  *Question?*

  Seething Magma was bespeaking him very quietly, as if not to hurt him, and George had the sense she’d been doing it for some time.

  I’m here, Mag, he thought to her.

  *Approval. Picture of George. Question?*

  How am I, she means. What can I possibly tell her, he thought. Forget it, Mag.

  *Apologies. Picture of Edern, picture of Rhodri.*

  Ah, she wants a report. I guess she must be filling them in. Alright, what would they
want to know?

  *Picture of Rhys. Question?*

  No, I didn’t find him but I’m pretty sure he’s here. Where else would he be?

  *Picture of black hat. Question?*

  The irreverent symbol George had assigned to Madog unaccountably cheered him, which is probably what she intended. Never mind, Mag, he doesn’t want much. Just how to destroy a way, and how I got here. Which reminds me, how’s Cloudie?

  *Picture of Cloudie, picture of Maelgwn, picture of old garden.*

  Well, at least they got away. If you ever get Cloudie back, try to save the boy, too.

  *Agreement.*

  He felt sick and started to shiver in the cold cell. He lay back down on the floor and curled on his side. The movement jolted his bruised kidneys and sent waves of pain down his back, and the pounding in his head took over the rest of his senses. Got to go, Mag, he thought, and passed out again.

  Seething Magma looked at the faces before her. They’d been waiting for news of George all day, ever since the first interrogation with Madog. She’d tried to tell them about it, but she didn’t have the vocabulary.

  Cydifor spoke with her quietly afterward and they framed more details, with a glove standing in for Scilti and a picture of a body showing damage, but when she saw the distress it caused them, she stopped and refused to elaborate any further.

  Eluned defended her decision, and they stopped pressing her for more than she was comfortable giving.

  She pointed at the collar and the symbol for speaking.

  “You spoke with George, just now?” Eluned said.

  One knock.

  “Rhys?”

  Three knocks. She didn’t know anything more about Rhys.

  “Do you know what Madog wants from him?” Ceridwen asked.

  One knock.

  She turned to Rhodri and pointed in the direction of the Edgewood Way. She made a cage of pseudopods like the one she held George in when he collapsed the trap way there.

  “Madog wants to know how George destroys the ways, or maybe how to make them into weapons,” Rhodri said. “Is that right, Mag?”

  One knock.

  “What else?” Ceridwen said.

  Mag took the collar to the map and traced the path George had walked.

  Cydifor said, “He wants to know how George got there.”

  One knock.

  “Anything else?”

  Two knocks.

  “How is George, Mag?” Edern asked.

  She started to answer, then stopped, then tried again, little interrupted movements of her body and pseudopods.

  “Never mind,” Edern said. “I guess I know.”

  She felt George’s pain, and their pain at his suffering and probable death. So much sorrow in their short lives. They couldn’t escape it, even in sleep. She’d felt Edern’s dreams last night, whenever he dozed off for a while. No, not even when they slept.

  The evening council was a subdued affair. Edern could barely make himself concentrate. He approved all the action for the recovering population that Cadugan laid before him and listened to Eluned and Ceridwen’s reports, but couldn’t focus on any of it for very long.

  Ceridwen offered to write his dispatches for Gwyn, and he stared at her for a moment, then nodded.

  He knew one thing, though—this uncertainty wouldn’t last much longer. Madog was like a cat. He tended to play with his food, but food it was.

  Was Rhys getting the same treatment as George, or was Madog distracted by his newest prisoner?

  CHAPTER 22

  The splash of water on George’s face woke him, and then he couldn’t breathe. He panicked, feeling a hand clamped over his mouth and nose and woke up completely, struggling to reach it but unable to move. The hand was removed. and he drew big breaths, trying to still his heartbeat.

  He opened his eyes cautiously, as if by keeping them closed he could put off what was coming. The reason he couldn’t move became clear. He was strapped into a sort of chair, an open iron framework with arms and a seat. All his clothing had been stripped away.

  The panic of immobility and vulnerability returned and drove his current injuries to the back of his mind. He had to force himself not to struggle, not to waste his strength.

  It was hard to see since he couldn’t wipe the water from his eyes. A face close to his moved back and he realized Madog had been leaning over him, watching his reaction. He shuddered with revulsion.

  Madog reseated himself comfortably in front of him. He was clean and well-dressed, as always. George was conscious of his own stench.

  “Ah, you’re back,” Madog said. “Good.”

  George couldn’t turn his head far. Behind him, he could feel warmth on his bare exposed back and heard a sound that he belatedly identified as metal and cinders. An image came to him unbidden of iron pokers working in a fireplace.

  In a moment of clarity, he thought, Mag, I’m sorry. You should go away. Now. I mean it.

  *Anguish.*

  Madog spoke. “So, how did you get here and how did you get into the cells?”

  “I made a way, of course,” George said.

  “Sorry, I don’t believe you. No one can make a way.”

  “You do,” George pointed out.

  “Ah, but that’s my little secret.”

  “I made it myself, all the way from Edgewood,” George insisted.

  He thought Madog doubted him but couldn’t quite rule it out.

  Madog leaned forward. “How do you shut them down? That’s a nice trick and I mean to have it out of you.”

  “Go pound sand,” George said. He could see that the meaning penetrated the unfamiliar slang.

  Madog looked at him in silence. Then he nodded to someone behind George.

  Red-hot fire burned slantwise along half his back, and he screamed. It seemed to echo off the walls.

  His breath came in gasps but he could hear, over that, the sound of an iron rod being returned to the fire behind him and stirred into the embers.

  The pain it left behind was indescribable. It drew all of his attention.

  Madog said, “Wrong answer, my boy. Our Scilti here can keep this up all day.”

  He nodded again, and George felt the heat of an approaching poker held near his back. He arched his back involuntarily to avoid it, and the heat receded, leaving just the original brand to throb and burn.

  “One more time,” Madog said. “How do you destroy a way?”

  George just shook his head, all his bravado gone.

  This time the poker struck with no warning, laying a line of fire across the first one. He managed not to scream this time. His back felt as if it had been exposed to the bone to bleed into the open air.

  He sat there bound to the chair, his head hanging forward with his wet hair in his face, and panted.

  “Hmm?”

  George did not respond.

  “Let’s freshen these up a bit,” Madog said.

  Blows struck George’s back, bursting along the burns and nearby skin. He screamed again at the first one, and soiled himself.

  Madog’s voice penetrated, delicately revolted. “Clean that up.”

  He heard the door open and a few moments later someone sluiced him down with a bucket of water.

  “I’d like your full attention, huntsman,” Madog said. “I may want to breed you to some of my stock and see what I get. After all, it’ll be easy to control your offspring, they’ll be less stubborn. But tell me, I understand you’ve already started that experiment with that cold bitch Angharad. How’s that going? Do you think you’ll get children out of her, or do you think it’ll be fawns, popping out in pairs, like their father?”

  George couldn’t keep from shuddering at the vision.

  “Ah, that’s what I thought. Fawns it is. Still, they’ll provide plenty of sport for you, won’t they, when they grow up? With the hounds, I mean.”

  The hated voice was in his head and he couldn’t get rid of it. He felt the horned man stir and told him, yes, do it n
ow, but he subsided again.

  “Go to hell,” George muttered.

  “You leave him alone.”

  George was horrified to hear Maelgwn’s voice and lifted his head. He’d come through the open doorway, knife drawn to attack Madog, but Madog had twisted aside expertly and caught him in a firm grip, disarming him.

  Maelgwn struggled to free himself. “You wait until Cloudie’s mom comes.”

  George caught his breath. Don’t let him notice, please, please, don’t.

  Madog held him effortlessly. “Cloudie? Is that my little beast?” Suddenly he focused his attention on the boy. “Is there another one? A bigger one?”

  He turned to George. “Is that how you’re doing it? You’ve got one like mine.”

  He was elated. “That would explain everything. With a big one, I could just take Annwn, encircle it like Edgewood. All mine. No need to worry about Gwyn.”

  Cernunnos exploded within George bursting some of the bonds holding him to the chair, but not enough to break free. He lifted his antlered head and glared at Madog. George’s senses were assaulted by the full stinks in the room, including himself, but it was less personal, just animal scents.

  The surprise made Madog loosen his grip, and Maelgwn freed himself, fleeing out the open door.

  Madog turned to look after him, but dismissed him as unimportant. The greater prize was here before him. He faced the manifestation of Cernunnos, tied to the chair, feeling the implacability of the silent threat and shrugged it off.

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “This one’s mine now, he’s not going anywhere. His beast will do me even more good than that Rhys hostage. Annwn’s not yours any more. It’s going to be mine. You’ll come round, after it’s all over, and maybe we can make a deal.”

  He nodded, and Scilti, behind the chair, reached around the great stag’s neck with a narrow knotted cord and choked them into unconsciousness.

  The tools fell from Angharad’s hands when she felt the echoes through the pendant. Oh, George, what’s happening to you? She leaned forward and gripped the sides of the table in front of her, bowing her head as he endured the next several minutes, before fading out. She drew herself up, shaking, and tried to calm herself.