by Karen Myers
One knock. She drew a thick line from Madog’s domain over to the eastern edge. She drew a similar thick line from below the drawing of Greenway Court over to the eastern edge. Finally she drew a thin line from Greenway Court itself in the same direction. The three lines looked like they would eventually meet, if the paper were large enough.
“That’s the Travelers’ Way and the Family Way,” Rhodri said. “The other must be Madog’s way from the old world. We knew that it had to exist.”
One knock. She touched the collar and the symbol for speech.
“George says…”
She crossed out the thick line from Madog’s domain.
One knock, pause, two knocks. The scratching noise that meant a question.
Cydifor said, “Should he destroy that way, too, yes or no?”
One knock.
Angharad saw Gwyn considering the strategic importance of a third way from the old world. It only took him a moment.
“Kill them all. Leave the bastard no way to escape,” he said.
One knock.
Rhodri and Gwyn started speculating on how this plan could possibly be accomplished. It was impossible for Mag to communicate that level of detail.
While they explored the question, Angharad was lost in more personal considerations. If George’s plan worked, he’d be coming back tonight. “If he can,” she reminded herself. And if the wound fever was too advanced, he would die of it, she knew this. Either way he would be very ill and there was little she could do for him.
Then one thought occurred to her. She scribbled a note, folded it, and gave it to Edern. “Can you see that this gets to Idris, right away?”
“I’ll send it with the latest dispatches, in just half an hour or so. Mark it urgent.”
George waited for the response to the plan he’d sketched out from Rhys and Maelgwn.
Rhys said, “Lay this out for me again. I want to see how many holes I can poke in it.”
“The crux of the matter,” George said, “is that Cloudie can’t be freed while Madog’s alive. We three can’t kill Madog.”
“Ruling out unreasonably lucky assault,” Rhys said.
“Followed by immediate death,” George said. “Yes, I think we can rule that out.”
He continued, “I could ask Mag to come, but Madog would claim her. I could claim her first, with her permission, but then Madog only has to kill me and then he can claim her himself. We’d be no better off.
“So, what I need to do is figure out how to bring an already claimed Mag in, and then get out of Madog’s reach before he kills me.” Or before I die anyway, he thought, and leave her in a jam, to be claimed by Madog.
Maelgwn said, “Cloudie could make you a way.”
“Madog won’t let her, she’ll be controlled.”
“Mag could make a way ahead of time,” Rhys suggested.
“That’s a good idea, but you don’t realize how something like that would stand out to Madog. He’d spot it in an instant, and it would be open when it was made. Either Madog would claim it ahead of me, or he’d be warned and never come near.
“No, what we have to do is set a trap, and look trapped ourselves. You two need to be hidden, and I need to be the bait. And then we need to hold him there long enough for an attack.
“I think we need to bring Madog here, to the old garden. The two of you can hide in a way that Maelgwn claims—Madog can’t go through them all, there are too many of them.
“Then I can provide a distraction that will keep him from escaping.”
Rhys said, “What can you do?”
“Kill all the ways he has, except these right here. With violence. I think Cernunnos will extend my reach, like he did for the Edgewood barrier way.”
“That’s gone?” Rhys said.
“Didn’t I tell you?”
Rhys shook his head but George couldn’t see it.
George felt light-headed but he was looking forward to this part of the plan. “So, I kill all the ways except these. He looks for his ways, sees that these are the only ones left, comes up to find out why, and catches me.”
“No!” Maelgwn and Rhys said, together.
“Hold on, he can’t bring any guards here. He and I are the only ones who can walk here safely, except for you, Maelgwn. I can’t run away or fight, so he’ll feel safe. He’ll love it. He’ll be infuriated at the loss of his ways and blinded to anything else.
“He’ll try something and I’ll bring Mag. Then I’ll dive into one of these ways and claim and close it. He won’t be able to reach me.”
Rhys said, “Why not claim one first?”
“Same reason Mag can’t. My signature will stand out just like hers. I’ll have to release this one before we start. Maelgwn’s signature looks a lot like Cloudie’s to me, maybe Madog doesn’t notice his.”
He faced Maelgwn’s voice. “You’ll have to make a pack of everything you want to take with you. You won’t be coming back.”
Rhys was still trying to puzzle out the impact of the way rules on the tactics. “What happens if Madog claims the open ways first? Won’t that lock you out?”
“In that case,” George said, “I’ll kill all of them except yours. Your way will be exposed but he won’t be able to do anything about it if it’s claimed. I don’t think he knows about Cloudie’s trick that let her break into this way.”
“Or maybe he does,” Rhys said. “Remember the trap way?”
That gave George pause. “You’re right. But if I throw enough problems at him and bring Mag, maybe she can kill him first.”
Maelgwn said, “It would be better if you just made a way yourself and got us all out when Cloudie’s mom came.”
“I don’t know how,” George said.
“Cernunnos does,” Rhys said. “Will he help?”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell.”
Rhys said, judiciously, “There are so many ways for this to go wrong, and just the faintest possibility it might work.”
“I think our only alternative is to give up. I don’t like the risk we run with Mag, but it’s the only chance I see to free Cloudie and maybe survive.” He shivered as the fever resumed its attack. “And I can’t wait—it has to be today or not at all.”
“What does Mag say?” Rhys asked.
*Agreement. Picture of Madog, picture of Seething Magma crumpled. Picture of Seething Magma, picture of Madog crumpled*
“She says now that Madog knows about her, he has to die, or she won’t be safe.”
“How can she kill Madog?” Rhys said. “How would Mag do it? She’s big, but she’s not that quick and I can’t see Madog hanging around while she tries to crush him.”
“I gave her a suggestion,” George said. He shivered uncontrollably again and lay down in his blankets and let the fever cycle take him, trusting they would rouse him before nightfall and help him get dressed.
At the afternoon council session, Gwyn reviewed their plans for George’s attack at nightfall.
“If this works, we should expect a way to appear, but we won’t know where ahead of time. That’s your job, Rhodri, of course.”
Ceridwen said, “Eluned and I have prepared for them, especially since we know George may need serious help. Wherever they arrive, we have to get them to the infirmary here as quickly as we can. If George’s leg has turned bad, we may have to remove it to save him.”
Gwyn glanced at Angharad who was staring at nothing and holding herself together. She clutched a package that Edern had given her from the afternoon courier.
CHAPTER 28
George’s fever completed its cycle and relinquished its grip for a while.
“What time is it?” he asked Rhys, weakly.
“Almost dusk.”
“Help me outside, then find a way behind me that Maelgwn can claim and close it. Once this starts, Madog might get here fast.”
Rhys got him partly dressed, cutting off the left leg of the breeches at the thigh to get them over the bandaged knee and t
he splints. Boots were impossible, but then he couldn’t walk on it anyway, and a sock would have to do. He took a shirt but refused his coat. Rhys reached for his forehead to feel for fever, and George shook him off. “You wear it.”
They got him upright with considerable difficulty, and George unclaimed the way. With Maelgwn guiding them around the tangled ways, George leaned on Rhys and was half-carried to a broken stone bench. Rhys lowered him down, trying to keep the splinted leg straight.
“Good luck, cousin,” Rhys said.
Maelgwn gave him an awkward hug, then led Rhys off to a nearby way. George felt it being claimed but there was something imperfect about it. Maybe he didn’t close it completely, to watch.
George sat as straight as he could on the bench, feeling for its edge with his hands to shift himself to the center. The fever’s abeyance wouldn’t last for very long, and he wanted to get this started while he was still relatively lucid.
He invoked the full form of Cernunnos. With his eyes, he saw that it was twilight. What better time for his patron?
Are we in agreement that Madog must pay?
Justice, came the reply.
Then help me extend my grasp, George thought.
Only one way left the valley, as far as he could tell—the way to the old world. He started by sealing it, to keep the rat in his trap with no way to escape.
With that taken care of, he decided to work from the outside in. That meant that the barrier way would be the first to go. It was also, by far, the way with the largest interior passage, since it wasn’t a traveling way.
He started with a bang. The barrier way exploded down its length as the air was forced out of a rip down the top line. The boom had length, like a curtain of sound. It bounced off the Blue Ridge and off of North Mountain, and echoed back and forth across the valley. It didn’t die off quickly, as thunder mostly does, and George realized that since the sound source was at ground level, it would be slower to rise and dissipate than thunder in the air. All the better, he thought.
Before the reverberations had ceased he was busy squeezing ways shut all along the outer periphery, his fists mimicking what his mind was doing. There were so many different methods of shutting a way explosively. He worked in random directions, but cleared entire rings before moving inward.
The thunderous noise began to roll in from all directions, resonating oddly off the snow-covered ground. He thought his fever must be amplifying the sound, but maybe it really was that loud. It grew, echoed off the Blue Ridge, and the echoes made echoes until it was a grand cacophony of noise rumbling from one side of the great valley to the other.
He pumped the ever-closer ways as if the noise were a swing which he kept filling with energy. Random gusts blew from all sides as the local vortices of collapsed air coalesced or reinforced each other.
There were just so many ways here. He felt as if he were trying to disassemble the girders from a skyscraper by hand, bolt by bolt. It took forever. He made a point of locating every last little way that Cloudie had ever made. He swept up a few older ways in the process, from before Madog’s time.
It was full dark, maybe an hour later, before he finally reached the inner few miles. These were dense with ways, and they included the great prize, the way from the old world that had first brought Madog here.
George circled around it popping the small ways like balloons, and then released it. It was wide and took a moment to fully collapse, folding like a blimp before losing its integrity. Being a traveling way, its passage wasn’t particularly long, and George was disappointed he couldn’t get a great boom from it. He thought it deserved better.
He smiled inwardly, the deer head expressionless, and admired the evening for a moment. It was likely his last. Then he took a breath and finished the rest of the ways—the ones in Madog’s buildings, in his dungeon, in his nearby villages—leaving nothing but the old garden untouched.
He tilted his head up, with the great crown of antlers, and listened to the last echoes rumbling to a close, and waited.
Rhodri stepped outside the conservatory and stood on the terrace facing west as the sun sank over the Blue Ridge. Seething Magma joined him.
The first roll of thunder was loud and long, and Rhodri thought it had to be the barrier way.
One knock.
Of course, he thought, she was watching it happen through George.
“It’s started, then?”
One knock.
He called the others out, and they stood in the snow together and listened to the rumbles that made it over the mountain, wondering how loud it must be on the other side.
They spoke little.
After about an hour, silence returned to the woods around the manor. Then, abruptly, Mag vanished. Ceridwen started forward and Rhodri grabbed her. “No, there’s a way here.” He claimed it and closed it, lest Madog do it first.
Maëlys stepped out into the ruined stableyard with Benitoe so that she wouldn’t have to shout over the noise of the diners in the inn. He told her about the posters he had asked Lleision’s guard to distribute to their posts around Edgewood, where they were helping to round up the newly awakened.
They were interrupted by the first boom from the west over the mountain. As the thunder and the rumbles continued, the door to the inn opened, and diners began to pour out, drinks in hand, to listen. Eventually several dozen people stood in the snow in wonder.
Benitoe turned to Maëlys. “Auntie, this must be a fight against Madog. I bet it’s George.”
He ran for his pony, sheltered in the collapsed stable, and took off at a gallop for the manor.
George’s peaceful evening ended when Madog arrived. He posted guards outside the garden walls and called Cloudie to him, mentally leashing her there.
He contemplated the figure of Cernunnos seated on the bench, staring back expressionlessly.
“Centuries of work,” he hissed. He was livid with fury. “I promise you, you will be sorry.”
George watched with Cernunnos’s expressionless face.
Madog casually claimed all the unclaimed ways in the old garden.
Rhys was right, George thought. He’s been doing this a long time. With one more effort, he collapsed all the ways in the garden, but he did it in a sequence, ending with the ones furthest from where he was sitting, hoping to hide Rhys and Maelgwn for a few moments more by directing Madog’s gaze away from him. It worked, he turned his head.
With Cernunnos’s help, George reached out to claim Seething Magma and she roared out of a way at his feet, facing Madog and sheltering George with her body.
George’s fever was kicking in again. He killed Mag’s way lest Madog try to use it, and then tried to stand with one leg and fell. Rhys grabbed him, threw his right arm over his shoulder, and forced him to hop on one leg, trying to back up while keeping Mag as a shield.
George heard him shout, “Get us out of here,” and Mag opened a way for them. Maelgwn tried to support him from the other side and they tumbled together out of the garden and into the snow, somewhere else. George hit the ground with a cry and faded out.
Rhys was horrified to realize the way had a very brief passage and they were still fully exposed to any efforts of Madog to kill George.
He knelt by George in the snow. “Wake up, you’ve got to kill this way.” He shook him and got no response. He felt his forehead—he was burning up.
“Lord Cernunnos, please. We have to kill it.”
The horned man manifested, and this time there was no trace of George to be seen in him. He killed the way and withdrew again. Rhys watched the scene on the other side vanish and caught a glimpse of Madog bloody and falling but he couldn’t see exactly what happened.
Maelgwn knelt beside him and shook George, trying to wake him. “Foster-father, wake up, please.”
George mumbled, “No, you can’t have him.” He started waving his arms about feebly, alarming Rhys who recognized this fever as worse than before. Where were they? They had to find she
lter.
He saw lights in the distance coming towards them. All he could hope was that they’d gotten out of Madog’s domains, because they couldn’t run any further now.
CHAPTER 29
Rhodri called to the people on the terrace. “There’s a new way, out where the other two were.” He pointed west. They took off on foot and passed a guard’s post, a perimeter Lleision had established for a little extra defense. Gwyn and Edern grabbed lit torches from it as they went by.
Rhodri tried to catch up with them but they were faster. He swore under his breath. He’d just have to lead from behind, tell them if they started going in the wrong direction. To his left Ceridwen was keeping up well, her long woolen skirts hoisted in each hand to lift them above the snow. A mounted guard cantered up on their left and Ceridwen shouted, but he didn’t hear her. She whirled in the snow, dropped her skirts, and with a gesture stopped both horse and rider abruptly. That got his attention. “Bring a stretcher,” she cried.
“Yes, my lady.” He wheeled and turned back.
The way was unclaimed and Rhodri feared Madog might use it. He tried to claim it, but it was slippery somehow, he couldn’t grasp it. It winked out. By then they were close enough that Rhodri was able to point Gwyn and Edern directly to where it had been.
They stopped, standing over bodies in the snow and holding up their torches. Rhodri finally caught up to them, breathing hard. Rhys stood up, filthy and haggard, but otherwise in reasonable shape. A feral, black-haired boy kneeling in the snow must be the wolf cub, but the mess lying next to him, talking deliriously and twitching in the snow, could that be George?
Ceridwen dropped to her knees in her skirts and took charge of George on the ground. When Eluned arrived, she oversaw the stretcher and commandeered the torches for light. With the help of more of the guards, arriving on the scene, they scraped George up out of the snow and bundled him onto the stretcher, bearing him off to the infirmary as quickly as they could. Angharad followed behind them.
As Rhodri watched, Rhys restrained the boy from going with them by main force. He walked him over to Gwyn. “Sir, this is my foster-brother, Maelgwn. He rescued both of us.”