Raven's Heirs

by Lesley Arrowsmith

The Copper Mine

  Owain landed lightly, his instinct for self preservation moving faster than his conscious thoughts. He had lost his grip on Gwalchmai's arm somewhere in the middle of the rockslide, and he had no idea where his crutch had gone. Shards of wood landed around him. Something banged onto his back, and slid off. Somewhere to his right, Gwalchmai gave a sharp cry, followed by a low moaning noise.

  Above him, scraps of wood hung over the drop. Owain could see a small portion of sky, and nothing more. He bit his lip hard, feeling the panic rise.

  "Goddess, that hurts. Are you there, lad?" There were scraping noises to go with the swearing. Gwalchmai was starting to crawl about. "Speak to me, lad, will you?"

  Owain swallowed on a bone dry throat. "I'm here," he managed to croak.

  "Give me a hand, would you?" Gwalchmai asked. "I think I twisted my ankle in the fall."

  Owain felt his way towards the voice, dragging his own bad leg, shaking less now he had something to do. The light that filtered down the shaft was dim, but he found Gwalchmai easily enough, pushed aside the bits of wood that had caught in Gwalchmai's cloak, and crouched beside him.

  Then he heard the hounds again, high above them, but very close, and after them, the sound of shouting and horses moving on the loose scree. The rumbling noise was the only warning he had - he flung himself over Gwalchmai, and hid his head under his arms as more rocks slid down the hole in the roof on top of them.

  When the noise stopped, it was very dark. Owain lifted his head slightly, wincing at the feeling of fresh bruises on his back. Rocks shifted and slid sideways, and he was free of them. He felt round carefully; where he had landed was now covered with a pile of rock almost as tall as he was - Gwalchmai had landed just to one side of the rockslide.

  Sounds of movement brought him back to Gwalchmai's side. The Harper was trying to sit up, but he was having difficulty. The strap of Gwalchmai's harp case had twisted against his shoulder. Owain helped the Harper to shrug it over his head, and then paused, with his hand resting lightly on the leather case. Experimentally, he gave it a shake. There was a strange sound, a rattling combined with a metallic and unmusical twanging.

  Gwalchmai almost howled.

  "My harp!" He lay facing away from the harp case. Owain rattled the harp case again. There was no doubt at all - he didn't need to open the case to see for himself. What was left of the harp was splinter and wire.

  Owain felt around in the dark. There was a wall not far away, and he helped Gwalchmai to crawl over and settle against it. For once, the Harper seemed unable to speak.

  "Are you hurt?" Owain asked. There was no reply. After such a shock, Owain hadn't really expected one. he ran his hands lightly over the Harper's body, not entirely sure what he was looking for.

  When he touched Gwalchmai's left foot, the Harper sucked in his breath in sudden pain.

  "Should I take the boot off?" Owain asked doubtfully.

  "Better not - I'd never get it back on again." Gwalchmai was doing some feeling around of his own - followed by more swearing. "We can't get out of here," he said at last. "I lost the amulet on the way down as well."

  Owain thought of the pile of rock that had followed them down. he suspected that the most likely place for the amulet to have fallen was right underneath all of that. Without much hope of finding anything, he returned to where Gwalchmai had fallen, and felt around in the rubble.

  "What's the point?" Gwalchmai asked. He made no move to help. "It could have bounced anywhere - or it might even still be up above."

  Owain looked up at the place where the hole in the roof had been. However much he strained his eyes, he could see no chink of light there.

  "If I'm careful," he said slowly, thinking it out, "I could lift myself up there and try to find that hole." Theoretically, it might be possible to dig a way out - or bring the whole roof down and kill them both. He shook his head slightly. The whole hillside seemed unstable - it wasnt' worth the risk, and he wasn't sure he had the strength left to use his Talent to fly for any length of time.

  "Owain Brecca Morwenna," Gwalchmai said, in a formal voice that seemed bizarrely inappropriate under the circumstances. "I very much regret that i may have brought you to your death."

  Owain shivered. The numbness of shock seemed to be keeping his claustrophobia at bay, for the moment. Everything seemed to be happening through a thick mist.

  "They'll scry for us," Owain said at last. "Won't they? There'll be a search party along...."

  "Eventually," Gwalchmai said, in a toneless monotone.

  Owain could feel himself starting to shake. Feelings of panic were beginning to beat against the numbness. He didn't want to die down here in the dark.

  Gwalchmai shifted, and put his arm round Owain's shoulders. "I'm sorry, lad," he said quietly. "I know how hard it is for awynwch to be enclosed."

  Owain snorted; it was almost a laugh, but laughter entirely without mirth. "This hardly counts as enclosed, not after what Kofi did to me," he said. He felt the arm around his shoulders tighten a little. Perhaps wisely, Gwalchmai said nothing.

  "It was when I first got there. They wanted to force me to work the wind for them, and I refused, at first." He paused, summoning up the courage to go on.

  "He had a hole in the ground, an old badger sett, I think. You had to crawl in, on your hands and knees, and then on your elbows and knees, and when you were wedged in so tight you couldn't go any further, that's when he put the binding spell on you, to keep you there - in the dark, with the earth pressing in on your shoulders so you couldn't breathe...." He stopped, unable to continue for a moment, and turned slightly in Gwalchmai's embrace, to face away from him.

  "I thought it would be easier the second time, that I could endure it better - but it was worse, and the third time.... The third time they had to drag me up there, weeping like a child and begging for mercy." He stopped again, shook himself all over like a wet hound. His voice was very low. "They didn't need to do it to me again after that," he said. "The threat was enough. Kofi knew he could make me do anything he wanted." He waited, but Gwalchmai said nothing. His arm remained, protectively, round Owain's shoulders.

  "So you see what a coward I am," he continued, at last, "and why I can't lead mother's people when she's gone."

  "I see that they found your greatest fear, and used it against you," Gwalchmai said. "There can be no blame to you for that."

  All the tension went out of Owain. He rested in the circle of Gwalchmai's arm, no longer struggling against shock and panic. He was just very, very tired.

  He must have slept. He woke to the same unchanging darkness. It was impossible to guess how much time had passed. he was very thirsty. Somewhere in the darkness, he could hear water dripping slowly.

  Gwalchmai's chin was down against his chest. He snored gently. Very carefully, Owain lifted Gwalchmai's arm and slipped out from under it. he crawled carefully across the cavern, heading for the sound of water.

  He searched for some time. The noise of dripping continued, but he could find nothing that was even remotely damp, and he didn't dare to go too far into the pitch blackness of the side tunnels.

  "Owain! Where are you, lad?" Gwalchmai's voice echoed slightly. It took Owain a moment to find the right direction to go back to him.

  It worried Owain that Gwalchmai had not attempted to moved from where he was propped against the wall. He wondered if the old man was hurting more than he had admitted.

  "It's all right," he said. "I was looking for water, but I couldn't find any."

  Gwalchmai sniffed loudly. "Can you smell something, lad?"

  Frowning, Owain sniffed too. Now he was thinking about it, there was a definite whiff of something dead down there with them. "A sheep, maybe?" he said. "Perhaps it could hear the water too."

  Gwalchmai said nothing, and that worried Owain even more. He realised he had been relying on the old man to take the lead, and tell
him what to do. It came to him slowly that there was nothing he could do. he would have to sit here with Gwalchmai until he died, and shortly after, he would die too, of thirst. he held out little hope of rescue. So far, his entire experience of being rescued had been a complete disaster.

  There was nothing he could do - unless.... The air in the cavern wasn't entirely still. Anyone who was not awynwch wouldn't notice it, but this was a small thing, and something that was easy to do.

  Owain stood up, balancing with one hand against the wall. he spread his arms to each side, and he stood very still, feeling the air brush against his skin, feeling it move in the cavern, trying to read in those feelings what it could tell him. "I think - Gwalchmai, I'm listening to the Air," he said. "It has a way out of here, but it's narrow."

  "How narrow?" Gwalchmai asked. He sounded as if he didn't really care.

  "Wide enough for me," Owain said, frowning as he tried to interpret what the Air was telling him. "And a long crawl, I think."

  "No use for me, then," Gwalchmai said. "No use for you, either, surely, if it's as narrow as you say."

  "I'll try."

  "Are you sure?" Gwalchmai sounded disbelieving.

  Owain gave a shaky laugh. "Meaning - you think I'll get in there and panic, and the last thing you want is me being hysterical in a narrow tunnel while you're stuck here?"

  Gwalchmai had the grace to sound embarrassed. "I'm sorry."

  Owain turned towards the low tunnel again. "Look, if it does get too much for me, I'll come back, and we'll think of something else - but I'm quite thin. I - I shouldn't get - stuck." He started stripping off his tunic and undertunic with quick, jerky movements. When he was down to his braies and hose and his shoes, he stopped. He took the pile of clothes and put them close to Gwalchmai. "I can put them round your ankle, if you like," he said. "Might make it a bit more comfortable, maybe," he murmured. He managed a wavering smile, even though Gwalchmai couldn't see it. "W-wish me luck."

  "Luck," Gwalchmai said, "and Goddess protect you."

  Owain was already on his hands and knees at the other side of the cavern, ducking under the arched entrance to the tunnel.

  For a time, the tunnel angled downward, and reasonably straight. The miners would have hauled baskets of stone up here from the workings. The floor was smooth and in places, Owain could almost stand. Here and there, other tunnels led off this first one, and there Owain would pause, feeling the Air on his bare skin, trying to gauge which direction the freshest air was coming from - and trying not to think about the labyrinth he was losing himself in.

  Gwalchmai would never have made it. Even the wide tunnels would have been too much for him to crawl down. When the easy going ran out, he would have had no chance.

  The air came now through a crack in the rock, horizontal with the cave floor. Owain felt around it carefully. There was just about enough room for him to get his head and shoulders through, and if he could do that, the rest of his body would be able to follow. He lay flat, and wriggled. One arm through, and his head. He shuffled sideways and pushed - and knew suddenly that he was under a knife edge of rock, with thousands of tons of rock above him, pressing down.... For one terrible moment, he was back in the tunnel where Kofi had trapped him, struggling against the binding spell, scrabbling to get out even though he was facing inwards and all his struggles just wedged him further in.

  Gasping for air, he heaved himself forwards, feeling the stone scrape against the skin of his back. The sudden lurch sent him tumbling down onto the floor of a larger cavern - still pitch black, but he couldn't feel the walls closing in on him. He stood, and almost fell as his bad leg twisted under him, stumbling on the uneven ground, his hands stretched before him to stop himself from running into a wall.

  When he tripped, and fell headlong, he lay for a moment, winded, and then tried to go more slowly and carefully.

  He could see his hand, groping along the wall. He was crawling again, his head occasionally bumping against the roof, but the roof was getting higher, and somewhere ahead of him there was light.

  Owain pushed his way up through the crack in the earth, crawled clear, and lay face down in the springy turf. Once he stopped moving, he felt that he couldn't go any further. He turned his head to one side. Somewhere above him, hidden by cloud, a lark was singing.

  He sucked the sweet, fresh air into his lungs, and listened to the lark, and waited for his limbs to start working again.

  He lay on the grass, regaining his strength, and he worried.

  Underground, he'd lost all sense of direction, and any sense of distance. Around him, the moorland all looked the same. he couldn't pick out any landmarks at all. That being so, he wondered how he would be able to lead anyone back to the cave to rescue Gwalchmai.

  His second problem was that he could see no signs of human habitation at all. There were no buildings, and no smoke rising. The nearest thing to a trace of human activity was the ghost of a track, halfway down the hill. Further down the hill, there was a stream, and bushes. Water was the first priority, and after that, maybe he could find a stick to lean on among the bushes. He lurched to his feet, arms spread wide for balance. If he stretched his bad leg as far as it would go, he could rest his toes on the ground. he didn't think he would be able to get far like that, though. He fell twice on his way down the hill. If he couldn't find a stick, he'd be reduced to crawling, and from the look of the country it could take days to get help if he had to move that slowly. Gwalchmai needed help now.

  The cold stream water was the most wonderful thing he had tasted in his entire life. He gulped it down, and threw some over his head and shoulders. It just made the rock dust that was coating him streaky, but it felt good.

  The bushes looked like a mix of hazel and alder, though it was hard to tell this early in the year without their leaves showing. The branches that looked strong enough for him to lean on were too thick for him to break off. He was beginning to resign himself to a long crawl when he saw the silver birch sapling, growing out of the bank of the stream a few yards away. Growing out of a loose shingle and sand bank. He could uproot the whole thing, and break off the little branches, and walk with it.

  He wasn't sure how far he walked, nor for how long, with the sun hidden behind the clouds. He was hungry, but at least his throat didn't hurt every time he tried to swallow. His knee hurt. There was a smear of blood where he'd caught it on something sharp, and the joint was starting to swell. The long scratch on his back smarted, and he had to constantly resist the urge to scratch it.

  He limped on, leaning heavily on his stick.

  A whitewashed cottage stood alone, a little way off the track. He scrambled across the ditch that followed the track here, and limped towards it, hoping it was occupied. A dog barked; dogs meant people, and his hopes started to rise. Then the thin brindled lurcher loped round the corner of the cottage, teeth bared and growling. Owain nearly fled. He stopped stock still, heart hammering, while the dog danced round him, barking furiously.

  "G'arn. Hold 'im, Giff!" The voice, raised in anger, belonged to a broad shouldered, squat man, following the dog round the corner of the house. He carried a spear as if he knew how to use it, and he made no attempt to call the dog off.

  Owain forced himself to meet the man's eyes. He had some idea of what he must look like, stripped to his underwear, torcless, his hair full of rock dust and with streaks of blood on his arms and legs and back. He was deathly weary now, too, though this was not the time to show it.

  The man with the spear wore a copper torc and a shepherd's cap - and an unfriendly expression.

  "Peace on this house," Owain said, slightly desperately. "I am Owain Brecca Morwenna, and I need your help."

  "A strange sort of peace you bring," the shepherd said, but he raised his fist at the dog, who cowered sideways. "G'arn. Get in the house." The dog slunk away. Slowly, Owain's heatbeat returned to normal.

  "Owain B
recca Morwenna?" he asked. He spat on the ground. "You're trying to pass yourself off as one of the Lady's brood? here in Lord Ianto's lands? You've got a nerve, boy. Besides, Owain Brecca's dead."

  "Don't believe me then, if you don't want to," Owain said desperately, realising what a mistake he'd made in telling the man his real name. "But my companion needs help. He's somewhere back there, trapped in a cave - an old mine - and I came for help. Is there anyone here who can come back with me and get him out?"

  "Here?" The man laughed. "No - just me and the dog."

  Owain's shoulders slumped in defeat. How much further would he have to walk? How much further could he walk? "How far...?" he began.

  "Three miles to the nearest Dun," the man said, shrugging. He was already turning away.

  "And will they be as inhospitable as you?" Owain snapped, at his retreating back.

  The man stopped. Owain had just given him one of the worst insults he could possibly give, here in this land where hospitality was a sacred duty.

  "Come on then," the man mumbled, over his shoulder. "S'pose I might have some beer and a bite to eat."

  It was almost dark when Owain limped wearily up to the gates of the Dun.

  The shepherd had given him a lump of barley bread and a mug of weak beer, but that was as far as his hospitality went. The dog had growled at Owain from a corner the whole time he was there.

  A man was at the gates, just in the act of shutting them. In the gloom, he could have been the twin of the shepherd Owain had just met.

  "Peace on this house," Owain shouted, lurching towards the closing gate. "I'm - a stranded traveller, and I need help for my companion, who's injured, back there."

  On the way down the hill, he had decided not to risk naming himself again, not in the lands of the uncle who wanted to hold him hostage.

  The man at the gate stopped to stare at Owain. Then he turned, without a word, and went inside, leaving the gate swinging half open. Owain limped as far as the gate and held on to the edge of it to hold himself up. He wasn't sure which of the three buildings in front of him the man had disappeared into. There was a large round hut, and two rectangular halls, or barns, maybe.

  After a moment or two, the door of the round hut opened, and half a dozen men and women came out, armed with spears.

  "A poor idea you have here of the laws of hospitality," Owain said scornfully. He gripped the rough edge of the gate tightly, afraid he might fall otherwise.

  "And a strange sort of hearth-guest you are, to come here at dusk in nothing but your braies." The speaker was an old woman, the only one in the group who was not carrying a spear.

  "I don't do it by choice," Owain said. "I've come for help. My - uncle - is trapped in an old mine back that way. I managed to get out to seek help." He drew himself up to glare at them all. "Is that shepherd up the hill one of your people?" he asked. "He nearly set his dog on me."

  The old woman came closer, leaning on the arm of a man with a spear. "How far did you say you'd come?" she asked.

  Owain shook his head wearily. "I don't know - miles."

  "And on that leg?"

  Owain looked down dully at his throbbing knee. It was twice the size of the other now and he could barely put any weight on it.

  "On this leg," he agreed.

  The old woman shoved the man with the spear forward. "Well, give the boy a hand, then, nephew." The man passed his spear to one of the others and put his arm round Owain's shoulders. Owain leaned on him gratefully. Around him, the others were putting up their spears too. "Come into the hall and tell us what happened," the old woman said. "And welcome to Dun Darren Isaf. It is Devorgilla Goch who welcomes you," she added.

  They sat him on a stool by the fire, and gave him a bowl of stew from the communal cauldron to eat. It was mostly kale, and dried peas, with a little barley to thicken it. These people were not starving, but they were on the edge of it.

  Owain looked around the circle of faces in the firelight. He could see children bundled up in shawls over cut down, shabby tunics. Even Caradog, nephew to the headwoman of the Dun, had a patch on the knee of his trews. There were no lamps, and the fire had been carefully built up under the communal cauldron to use the minimum of firewood. At the edges of the round hall, the draughts whistled.

  As he ate, Devorgilla Goch herself rubbed honey on his scratched and bruised back. Owain looked at her thin white hair and tried to imagine the flame red hair she would once have had, with that nickname. Caradog had long red hair, and so did half the others in the hall.

  Devorgilla came round to kneel at his feet. She had a bowl of water, and carefully washed his feet - though she ignored all the other places where he was dirty, which was just about all over his body. Owain relaxed slightly after the footwashing; it meant that they were treating him as a hearth-guest now, not just a visitor. He could think about a wash to get clean later, when he wasn't so tired. When she had finished with his feet, the old woman brought a pot of oil of wintergreen and smeared it on his knee, covering it all with a linen cloth.

  Caradog Goch squatted to one side of him and Devorgilla, sending away the bowl and cloths she had been using with a younger woman, made herself comfortable on a roughly woven cushion on the other side. They didn't even have a chair for the head of the Dun, unless it was the stool Owain was sitting on.

  "Hearth Guest, tell us your tale," she said, in the old formal style. Owain had been thinking about this on the way down from the mine. he couldn't tell them what had really happened - they were Ianto's people.

  "I am Owain Eryl," he began. It was a common enough name, after all, and not a lie. "I was travelling with Gwalchmai Morgan, the Harper. You may have heard of him." A murmur around the hall told him they had. "We were walking across the moorlands when we came to the old copper mine. There was a landslide and we fell together down one of the shafts. I managed to find a way out of the mine, and I came here to seek help. Gwalchmai is hurt. Without your help, he will die." They wer looking doubtful. "Please," Owain said. "The Lady Morwenna values his life. I'm sure she will be generous to those who help him." He couldn't promise more than that. He hoped it would be enough.

  Devorgilla Goch nodded slowly. "We have heard you," she said. "Now we must discuss what you have told us."

  Now she draped an old checked blanket round his shoulders and led him away from the fire. A pallet had been made up for him against the wall, with a hurdle propped up as a screen to give him a semblance of privacy, and some protection from the draughts.

  Owain lay down, wrapping the thin blankets close. His knee throbbed, and the long scratches down his back smarted despite the honey. He closed his eyes, and listened to the murmur of voices around the fire.

  "How can we believe him?" one voice said. "He looks like a runaway slave to me."

  "But he speaks like a lord," a man said, doubtfully.

  "We could use a slave here," said another woman. "We could get some work out of him, and if his real master came looking for him, we might get a reward for giving him back, too."

  Owain lay very still in the darkness, wondering how easy it would be to slip out of the hall and disappear from the Dun.

  "Too late for that," said Caradog. "We've already offered him hospitality. And why would he make up this story about the Harper? We can go to the mine and find out the truth of it easily enough."

  Owain relaxed slightly. Maybe he wouldn't have to run after all.

  "The Lady's Harper," said Devorgilla. "Some of us here still remember what it was like whenthe Lady was our patron. We always had enough, then, even in the worst years. She looked after us. If we help now, she'll look after us again."

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  "We'll go to the mine tomorrow, then," Caradog Goch said. "If the Harper is there, then we'll rescue him, and take him back to the Lady. If he's not - then we will still have the boy, and a torcless liar doesn't deserve hospitality.
We'll do as Tegau suggested, in that case."

  Owain shivered. One thing he had never considered, when he decided to go for help, was that he might end up enslaved by his own people.

  He was aware of movement in the hall. The whole extended family was bedding down by the fire, along with their dogs. This was such a poor Dun that the headwoman didn't even have a bed of her own.

  If they found out who he really was, and that Ianto wanted him, they would sell him for a sack of barley.

  *****