by Terry Madden
The fusion of sky and sea, of blood and bone.
Rebirth in the body of a god.
The view of the room came into crispest focus. Through the prism of this new reality, Connor could see Elowen’s pain as she rocked to and fro in a heap beside the door. He could feel the guard’s blade pierce Dylan’s thigh, he could feel Iris’s terror as she cowered behind a tall chest. And Dish…Dish crawled forward into the room behind them all with a deep desire to pay the price for his imagined mistakes.
But Connor would pay for them all.
He knelt beside his own body. As he reached out to dip his fingers in his own blood, Saeth was on him.
Clad in leather and horn, the woman was a mountain with two razor-sharp blades, one in each hand. And she meant to cut Tiernmas down.
The dragon, whose body would not fit through the balcony door, sent its head snaking into the circular chamber and snapped at Saeth. She dodged the teeth and barely rolled away from the gout of green flame.
“No!” Connor cried with Tiernmas’s voice. He envisioned the dragon swiveling its head to blast the next wave of Sunless guards that now entered the room.
The beast complied with a bark of flame, narrowly missing Dish who continued to drag himself relentlessly forward.
But Saeth was on her feet again. She tapped her blades together, death in her eyes. Maybe Connor should have explained his plan more fully to them.
“Call off your warrior!” Connor called to Dish. In English.
When Saeth continued to come, Connor pleaded, “Dish, it’s me for god sake!”
“Connor?”
“Yes!”
“Bloody hell!”
Connor closed his eyes and dipped his fingers into his own cooling blood. The intensity of this power was a seduction that toyed with Connor’s deepest desires. The eyes of the universe watched, and he watched through them. The pure energy fused in the cores of stars; it burned in his breast and he knew he could remake the Five Quarters, resurrect the old ways and bring Arianrhod home. The runes would be written again, the old tongue spoken and the stones would awaken to the touch of the stars…Yet, there were others enslaved inside this flesh. They had sacrificed their greenflow for Connor and Tiernmas.
The legion. The multitude of souls that had known nothing but the darkness.
The Sunless would see the Sun once again.
Angharad had sent Connor to free them, not devour them.
In its efforts to come inside, the dragon had dislodged masonry from the doorway leading to the balcony. Now, its warm breath clouded the air and sent the Sunless sprites spinning and tumbling.
Connor looked at the faces that surrounded him. Saeth, swords red with blood, prepared to kill him, or try. Fiach, wounded yet living, on the floor beside Dylan who was tended by Iris, now binding his wounded leg. Dish had dragged himself beside Connor, and Lyl withdrew the labrys from its hidden sling beneath her cloak.
These were the people Connor served. Not the gods. Not an immortal king. Not his own arrogant designs on making a world free of pain and death.
Connor’s eyes—Tiernmas’s eyes—found Elowen.
She stood near the door. Her eyes were filled with tears and horror. That was all Connor could ever hope to give her, tears and horror. It was that alone that propelled him. Setting Elowen free.
His vision turned back inside, to the struggle of the legions wailing to be free. And to Tiernmas, the crippled prince, held in the embrace of the salamander. The young man wept with joy, and Talan was there with him.
“You’ve come for me.” The words tumbled from Tiernmas’s lips, those now shared with Connor. “At last. You’ve come to set us free.”
He dipped his fingers again into the congealing blood of a man from the land of the dead, a blood scribe who was the sacrifice for the great unmaking. He tugged at the silken brocade of the robe Tiernmas wore to expose the sculpting of the Crooked One’s chest. Then he closed his eyes and watched in his mind—the motion of Angharad’s fingers upon the forehead of the plastic dragon.
Upon this perfect skin, he made the first mark, a hook-like stroke. Then the next, a series of splashes encircled by a triad of arrows. Finally, the long strike through them, bisecting the rune and unmaking the manifestation of Connor’s deepest hopes.
In a plume of bilious fog, the body that was Tiernmas, Talan, and a legion of souls disgorged into the Chamber of the Sun.
Connor rushed forward with them.
Free.
Chapter 32
Dish watched as Tiernmas, Connor, dipped his fingers in Connor’s blood. The wreath of flowers that continually bloomed and budded now went to seed. Pods burst forth and scattered downy parasols of seeds that joined the cloud of Sunless whose numbers were so great, they dimmed the glow of the sunstone.
The marks, runes, that Tiernmas had traced upon his chest seared green fire into his skin.
Looking into Connor’s eyes, set into a god’s face, it became so clear…Dish had never been Connor’s teacher, but the other way around. Connor didn’t need to be saved, but to save.
As Connor’s steady hand traced the last stroke of the intricate ideogram, his eyes met Dish’s. And he smiled.
Like a frightened flock of starlings, Sunless sprites broke forth from Tiernmas’s mouth, eyes, nostrils. They flew forth in the thousands, their radiant bodies striking Dish’s face and body as the torrent of freed souls joined the others in the room.
Dish tried to see his companions through the dense swarm and the cacophony of wings. Lyl stood near the sunstone, her arms wide as she wondered at the spectacle that swirled about them.
When Dish looked back to Tiernmas, he was no longer the godlike creature he had been, but was now a man no older than Connor. Tiernmas’s robes hung like a sack on his withered body. His hair was dark and his face long and plain with wideset, expressive brown eyes. He tried to stand from his place beside Connor’s fallen body, but it was clear that his left side was paralyzed, his spine bent. He cradled his withered left arm with his right.
He said to Dish, “You must finish this, my lord.”
The man’s gaze moved to Lyl who was withdrawing the labrys from under her cloak and placed it in Dish’s hands. Saeth had lifted him so he could lean against her.
Fiach assisted her and together, they moved Tiernmas, the crippled prince to a bench that might act as a block. They helped him to kneel. He made no resistance. Dish knew he was everything Connor had said of him. A man to be respected, followed, loved.
“You must not hesitate,” Tiernmas, Connor, said to him. “These captives need you to finish the task. They must be free.”
“Aye,” Dish said to him, feeling his voice like gravel in the sea, feeling the timbre change to that of Nechtan’s voice. “Forgive me,” he begged of the young man.
“I forgive,” the young Tiernmas said.
“May your soul find peace in the otherworld,” Dish said.
The labrys was sharper than it appeared. It was over swiftly.
Dish could not still the trembling that consumed him, and handed the bloody weapon to Saeth as the Sunless swarms streamed past them and out the doors to the balcony. They moved out over the land like the rapacious insects that had stripped field and forest of life not so long ago.
“Where are they going?” Dish asked Lyl.
“To renew the land, to join in the dance once again.”
“What dance?” The question came from Iris.
“The dance of life and death,” Lyl said, pointing out beyond the balcony. “Look.”
Fiach and Saeth gathered Dish and carried him as they followed Lyl to the balcony. The dragon, so fearsome, appeared to be dead. Its Sunless inhabitants had fled. The sun had found the western sea, and the first stars were winking alive, but in the duskiness, Dish could still see the greening. The Sunless appeared as ribbons of fireflies, dispersing in every direction like the flow of the four streams from the well.
Dylan and Iris and Elowen shared cries of
astonishment.
Iris pointed out a distant flock of curlews alighting at the edge of the lake, appearing ghostly pale in the twilight. But even with the color of daylight fading, Dish could see what she meant. It began as a blush of palest new-green as the bog sprang to life. Then it spread to the heath, purple with heather, and yellow gorse, and finally, the forests to the north, which flushed with the deep green of fir and oak. The skeletons of the great forest sprouted anew, leaves and branches. And the air was alive with the return of the birds.
Dish had forgotten the dragon was there. But its eye stared at him, the pupil dilating in the evening light. Dish thought a command, as he had when Connor had first shaped the creature. In response, the dragon lifted its head and turned both eyes to Dish. It was clearly not dead.
It tipped its horny chin as if in deference.
Dish saw the red sprite, the one he had seen creep forth from Connor’s dying breath. Connor had not gone with the others, had not returned to the land, had not found his way to the well. The red sprite hovered now over the bulk of the great dragon. He seemed to be asking Dish for permission. But for what?
“Connor,” Dish began. He found Lyl beside him. Her hand laced with his.
“Aye,” she said. “I think he wishes to stay.”
“Stay?”
“He belongs in the otherworld, as do you. But it seems you both will stay with me.” To the red sprite, she said with a teasing tone, “You’ll disrupt the balance, you know. How shall you fix that, blood scribe?”
The red sprite alighted on the dragon’s head, moved down its snout, then vanished into the gaping nostril.
The napping dragon startled to its clawed feet, sending all on the balcony moving back in fear. Like a wave rolling over a sandy shore, the green plating of its scales turned blood red until the creature was remade.
A red dragon.
“Connor,” Elowen said through her tears. “You’ll stay with me, love.”
As if in reply, the creature spread its wings and tested them against the night air, then launched from the balcony, taking bits of railing with it.
The sun had just passed beyond the western hills when Pyrs took the gates of Caer Sidi. They were not met by the risen monsters they’d been fighting, but by the dead, disgorged of their sprites. Clouds of them streamed from the fortress. They met no resistance as they crossed the outer ward, the great hall, and mounted the stairs to the Chamber of the Sun. It was there Pyrs knew he would find Tiernmas. But he didn’t expect to find his friends. Lyleth and Dylan.
Pyrs’s men witnessed the liberation of the Sunless with all in Caer Sidi, freed by the falling of the silver labrys, wielded by a man who had the eyes of his friend, Nechtan.
The others had gone to the balcony to watch the greening. Pyrs slipped the shroud from his head to behold the fabled sunstone, which must have been brilliant in the day. It still glowed faintly with a honey-colored hue, as if the sun were trapped inside even in the night. Beside the great shard of the stone, Pyrs saw a child standing quietly among the severed heads of the Sunless. Had she been here to see this bloodshed?
She had red hair. She looked frightened, as well she should be.
“Well now,” he said to her, “who might ye be?”
“I’m Angharad,” the child said. “I get to come home now.”
“And where’ve ye been?”
“Playing in a wood far away. Where’s my mum?”
With the child’s hand in his, Pyrs found Nechtan on the balcony, wearing that other man’s body, but speaking with the authority of the king he knew so well. When Pyrs and the child stepped out, Nechtan did not take his eyes from the girl. Lyleth swept Angharad into her arms, and the three of them held each other as if they would never let go.
It took little for Pyrs and Fiach to convince the other chieftains of the Five Quarters that this man was indeed Nechtan, returned for a third time from death. And his right to rule the Five Quarters would not be taken from him because of the imperfections of his flesh.
“The land’s fruitfulness is not a mirror of the strength of the king’s body,” Pyrs argued, “but of the strength of the king’s soul.”
Besides…this king was protected by a dragon.
Epilogue
As she had every night for the past thirty years, Bronwyn sat on the porch of Merryn’s cottage, and watched the sun wander to the west over Penzance. She pulled her sweater closer against the chill. Even on fair days now, she was cold, for her blood didn’t flow like it used to. She was as old as Merryn had been when she’d died, and still she dreamed that Hugh, or Connor would return from across to Void, take her by the hand, and lead her to the land of the living.
She poured herself another whisky, stroked the skinny gray cat on her lap, and watched the sky blush with the threshold of night. The birds chattered as they sought a roost, and the smell of the dew settling upon green leaves brought a cool to her soul.
As long as she’d been able, she’d spent her evenings by the entrance to the well, watching the frogs that vanished into the waters inside, crossing to the land of the living. Oh, how she wanted to be one of them.
But on this evening, a figure moved far across the pasture, down by the barrow, and her heart leapt. The figure soon became clear to her old eyes. Figures. There were two. A man and a small horse. His was a face she’d not seen in many decades.
As he drew closer, she said, “Good evening, Mr. Peavey.”
“Evenin’, miss.” He tipped his cap.
“You’ve come for me?” she said hopefully.
“Aye, that I have.”
From behind Mr. Peavey, the little horse drew closer. How she got onto her back, Bronwyn didn’t know, but she turned to look back at herself, an old woman sitting on the porch, asleep with a skinny gray cat on her lap.
She knotted her fingers in the mane of the seal-gray pony, and rode off. The pony’s mane was aflutter with red ribbons as she trotted toward home.
Afterword
It’s been a long journey with my friends from the Five Quarters. I know I’ll miss Connor, Lyl, Nechtan, and the rest.
I’d like to thank my publisher, Michael Wills and Digital Fiction, Rachel Swirsky, who edited the manuscript, and my family for putting up with me, especially Alan Maulhardt. Thanks to King Arthur’s Labyrinth, I hope to visit one day, and encourage others to do so when in Wales.
I’d like to send a big thank you to my readers. Without you, there would be no Five Quarters.
Visit my website at TerryMaddenWrites.com, and follow me on Twitter @TLMaddenwrites. I’m also on Bookbub!
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About the Author
Winner of awards in both fiction and screenwriting, Terry has written historical and mainstream fiction, but her first love is speculative fiction. With Middle Earth and Earthsea as early inspirations, the Celtic shadow world known as the Five Quarters takes root in her series “Three Wells of the Sea.”
If you are interested in becoming one of her tribe, or possibly doing some beta reading on book three, please contact me via email at [email protected].
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Copyright
Three Wells of the Sea, The Salamander’s Smile, and Halls of the Sunless
The Complete Trilogy – 3 Book Box Set
Written by Terry Madden
Executive Editor: Michael A. Wills
This story is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, locations, and events portrayed in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination, fictitious, or used fictitiously. No claim to the trademark, copyright, or intellectual property of any identifiable company, organization, product, or public name is made, and no such entity has endorsed this work of fiction in any way. Any character resembling an actual person, living or dead, would be coincidental and quite remarkable.
Three Wells of the Sea, The Salamander’s Smile, and The Halls of the Sunless. Copyright © 2016 / 2017 / 2019 by Terry Madden. These stories and all characters, settings, and other unique features or content are copyright Terry Madden. Published under exclusive license by Digital Fiction Publishing Corp. Cover Image Adobe Stock: Copyright © #117486784 and #131234426. This box set edition first published in print and electronically: June 2019 by Digital Fiction Publishing Corp., LaSalle, Ontario, Canada. Digital Fiction, Digital Crime Fiction and its logo, and Digital Fiction Publishing Corp and its logo, are Trademarks of Digital Fiction Publishing Corp. (Digital Fiction).