“And might you be willing to share this map or is it for your eyes only?”
Although this was phrased as what for Annwr was a civil inquiry, Caelym understood it was not a question but a command, and he answered accordingly. “I have been but waiting for the right moment.”
If he’d been standing, he would have bowed, but as it was, he contented himself with a dignified nod and turned to open the flaps of the battered backpack that was nestled as close to his side as Aleswina was to Annwr’s. The leather satchel he drew out was even more scraped and stained than the outer bag, but it had belonged to Olyrrwd, the shrine’s master physician, who had bequeathed it to Caelym with his final breath. It contained Caelym’s most precious possessions—his healing implements and amulets, the golden pendant that had been Feywn’s gift to him when she named him her consort, and the map showing the path he must follow to find his sons.
He pulled out a roll of parchment wrapped in a layer of kid-skin, undid the ties, and spread it against his knees. Not so much as a drop of water had reached it and its inscriptions remained as distinct and clear as the day it was drawn by none other than—
But Annwr could see for herself!
He held it out before her and watched with no small satisfaction as her eyes opened wide and her mouth gaped.
As Caelym guessed, Annwr recognized both the map’s meaning and its maker.
Only the very highest of the priests of their order had access to ink and parchment. Of those who did, their oracle would have cast himself off the top of his tower before he would have written his prophecies down for someone to read later and compare them with what actually came to pass, and their physician’s scrawl of symbols and hatch marks were barely comprehensible even to his apprentice.
The elaborately illustrated parchment that Caelym held out like a sacred offering could only be the work of their chief priest and master bard.
With the embers in their firepit crackling and flickering like a smaller version of the hearth in the shrine’s great hall, Annwr could almost hear Herrwn strumming his gold-inlaid harp and singing his ancient sagas. Just for a moment, she felt a nearly unbearable longing to listen to him bringing those tales to life again. The lingering feelings of reverence she harbored for the shrine’s master bard, however, were dwarfed by her recollection that Herrwn, with his mind forever caught up in the past, could get lost going from his bedroom to the dining hall—and it was dismay rather than awe that flashed across her face when she realized that a map he’d drawn was all that Caelym had to find his lost children.
“So . . .” She spoke carefully, using much the same tone of voice as she’d use to ask a child to tell her what a jumble of squiggles scratched in the mud was meant to be. “Tell me about this map and how it shows us the way to where your boys are.”
After naming one after another of the main figures and symbols and explaining how each served as a warning to him of the dangers he was destined to encounter on his quest to find his beloved sons, Caelym pointed to a small sketch of a horse-drawn cart and a cluster of sheep near what Annwr had taken to a be patch of oversized mushrooms but was, it turned out, Herrwn’s depiction of the peasant huts of Benyon’s sheepherding kinsmen.
“See, here is the village where Benyon’s kinsmen live, grazing their sheep in lush meadows and rowing their boats on a river abounding with shoals of fish and flocks of waterfowl.”
“And do you know the name of this village or of Benyon’s kinsmen?”
Caelym shrugged. “He said it is a village where they raise sheep and it is on the road between the mountains and the eastern sea.”
“Which road?”
“Is there more than one?”
“There are . . .” Annwr bit down on her lip to stop herself from shouting at him, There are a dozen roads and a hundred villages and thousands of sheepherders in Atheldom, so tell me how this map is going show you where to find your sons!
Caelym’s next words, “Benyon told us his kinsmen’s village was in Atheldom, and we are in Atheldom! We must be almost there!” came out sounding like a plea.
Hearing the anguish in his voice, Annwr didn’t tell him how hopeless she knew his search to be; nor did she reveal her growing suspicion that the man he’d sent off with his two sons and a pouch of silver and gold coins to pay their keep might not want to be found. Instead, she reached out her hand. “Give me the map, and I will see what I can make of it.”
As she pretended to study the map, Annwr was actually thinking that there was only one pass that a wagon could travel over the mountain ridge separating Derthwald from Atheldom. And she was fairly certain that from there the road went around the east side of the forest, crossed over the river, and reached to a small village before it branched off in different directions. While the travelers she’d listened to had grumbled about the swill that the village innkeeper served for ale, it had been clear that they all stopped at his inn to drink it.
If she was right about that, then there was only one route Benyon and the boys could have taken into Atheldom, and Benyon, being a man with money in his pouch, would have stopped there too. While it went without saying that he would not have given either his own or the boys’ real names, there was at least a chance that the innkeeper would recall them and remember which way they’d gone—especially since, never having been outside Llwddawanden before, their dress or behavior likely would have seemed odd to a Saxon villager.
As she rolled up the map and handed it back, she told Caelym what she’d been thinking, leaving out her qualms about Benyon’s loyalty. Caelym didn’t argue, but he had little to offer that helped. They’d taken every precaution to be sure no one would take notice of either Benyon or the boys—seeing to it that they were dressed in the most ordinary of outsiders’ clothing, cautioning the boys to speak only to Benyon and say nothing of their life in Llwddawanden. As to the risk of Benyon giving away his true identity through his speech or manners, Caelym said, “He has for years gone on missions for us in the outside world without ever being discovered.”
Listening to Caelym’s account, a dark cloud of hopelessness settled over Annwr. What chance was there that anyone would remember a nondescript, middle-aged Celt passing through two years before?
“So there is nothing special about Benyon that anyone would notice or remember?” she pressed only to have him shake his head.
“As I have said, he is of ordinary height and appearance. His hair is brown. His eye is brown . . .”
There was something amiss in Caelym’s usage, as if his struggles with English were affecting his Celt. Annwr’s correction was only half-conscious. “His eyes are brown.”
“No, his eye is brown. He has only one—the other was lost accidentally when he stood too close behind as the shrine’s chief cook was pulling the skewer from a roasted lamb.”
While Caelym went on describing how deftly Olyrrwd had removed the punctured and deflated eyeball, Annwr felt a glimmer of hope. A one-eyed man would be memorable, however ordinary he was in every other respect. After agreeing that Olyrrwd was a master of his art, she eased back to lying down and drifted off into an odd dream of walking along a forest path holding hands with Herrwn, who was wearing a monk’s robe and telling her the story of Gwendolwn and the honey tree.
