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Rhiann
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RHIANN DIDN’T LIKE boats. The bards sang of the Welsh being caught between the mountains and the sea, and despite having lived near the sea her entire life, there was no doubt that it was the mountains she preferred. That the sea was growing rougher did nothing to help.
Cade, Rhun, and Taliesin had decided, in the end, to sail to Caer Dathyl, just the nine companions: Cade, Taliesin, Rhun, Goronwy, Dafydd, Hywel, Bedwyr, Siawn, and Rhiann. The rest, led by Geraint and Tudur, had left from Aberffraw the day before, riding to a camp just north of Caer Dathyl. Cade deemed it his job—and by extension theirs—to enter Caer Dathyl, determine what was happening there, and open the fort from the inside so that the rest of the army could enter it. If they could even go so far as to trick Teregad into doing it himself, they would. Cade was looking to improvise.
Siawn was a last addition. He had insisted on it. “Gwyn is my cousin too,” he’d said, “and Teregad my brother. I know I am no soldier, but I’m coming with you even if I have to hide in the hold.”
“You’ll give us away at Caer Dathyl,” Cade had said. “Everyone knows you.”
“They do,” Siawn said, “but I’m not so sure they’d betray me. I’m a younger son and a priest. I was never a threat to anyone, nor did I lord over the populace and call attention to my princely status. Because of me, the people may welcome us, perhaps even hide us.”
“It might be a chance worth taking,” Rhun said. Perhaps because Rhun, of all people, supported the idea, Cade had let Siawn come.
“At worst,” Siawn had added. “I can lead you safely there.”
It was a day’s sail, no more than fifteen miles from Aberffraw, even hugging the coast, but both Cade and Taliesin were grimly pessimistic about whether or not the companions would even make it. Within an hour of boarding the boat, a fierce wind had blown up. Now, Rhiann huddled in a corner, jostled every now and then by Dafydd who knelt next to her, hanging his head over the side of the boat and heaving up his insides.
Up and down the boat rocked. Increasingly, at every downward rush, a chasm opened before the prow of the boat, and then it would fight its way up through the spray only to fall again. As the weather worsened, the friends huddled together, either in the single cabin or on the main deck.
“By all the Saints who ever lived,” Dafydd said, “why did God create boats?”
“I don’t think that was God.” Rhiann stood up, making sure to stand on the windward side of him. Spray from the sea flew into her face, spotting her cloak and dress. Since sneaking around was the order of the day, Cade had dressed Rhiann as a peasant girl so, as he’d said, she’d be less easily noticeable. He had laughed as he’d said it, implying, as unlikely as it seemed, that it was a lost cause.
“Then why didn’t the first one sink, so we’d never think to try again?” Dafydd moaned and laid his cheek on the side of the boat’s rail. “I’ve been here before, you know. My boat from Ynys Manaw was wrecked right here. What was I thinking that I thought to try again?”
Rhiann patted him on the back making ‘there, there’ noises.
Dafydd opened his eyes. “I need to ask you something.”
Rhiann looked down at Dafydd, conscious that his tone had changed to one far more intent and serious. “What is it?”
“Why do you stay with me?”
“I’ve cared for sick men before, Dafydd. It doesn’t bother me.”
Dafydd shook his head. “I don’t mean that. Why aren’t you with Lord Cadwaladr?”
Rhiann gawked at him. “Wh—wh—what do you mean?”
Dafydd straightened his head so he was no longer looking at her sideways. He turned towards her, shifting onto one knee, and took her hand. “I love you, Rhiann. Desperately and completely. I would gladly keep you with me always. Do you love me?”
Oh no! How could I have been so blind? “I do love you, Dafydd.” Rhiann dropped to her knees in front of him. “But not that way. I—I can’t love you that way.”
Dafydd nodded. “You love me as a friend, while King Cadwaladr ...” He paused as they both looked to where Cade stood near the prow of the boat.
“I do like you very much. I do like spending time with you and that was all I thought it. I would never want to hurt you.”
“But you love him,” Dafydd said. There was a finality in his voice.
Rhiann swallowed hard. “I know he’s a sidhe. He’s made it clear he doesn’t want me with him, and I’ve tried to respect that. I know that it’s crazy to think ...”
“It’s not crazy,” Dafydd said. “If Cadwaladr sent you away it was because he was trying to protect you from himself. Anyone can see how he feels about you. By now, however, he probably thinks that you love me instead of him. I can’t say the thought saddens me at all.” His last words were fierce.
Rhiann recalled Cade’s questions about Dafydd from the day before. What a fool I’ve been! She rested her forehead on the rail, as Dafydd had done, unsure of what to do next. She glanced over at Cade whose face was still turned away, focused on the weather and the gods. Can it be true? Dafydd is too young to know such things, isn’t he?
Dafydd smiled, despite his sickness and what the effort cost him. “Go. See to your lord.”
“Dafydd—” She shook her head in denial, desperately wanting what he said to be true but unable to believe it.
“Go,” he repeated.
Rhiann got to her feet. Then, with one last look at Dafydd’s white face, Rhiann went. She fought her way to the front of the boat where Cade had planted himself, holding onto the tail of Taliesin’s cloak to steady him. Taliesin stood, his arms spread wide, exhorting the clouds, which took that moment to defy him and release their rain.
The drops began to fall, soon soaking the boat in an unrelenting downpour. Seeing her beside him, Cade reached out with his free arm to grab Rhiann and pull her to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on, her heart beating wildly.
“We should return to shore!” Goronwy said from his post against the mast.
“No!” Taliesin shook his head to give his words the proper emphasis. “That is what Arawn wants.”
“This is Arawn’s doing?” Cade tipped his head upwards. Rhiann followed suit, looking as he did for a face distinguishable within the clouds.
“Arawn is behaving exactly as we hoped,” Taliesin said. “He’s ignoring Tudur and Geraint in favor of pursuing us. Are we not sailing because we feared his minions would stop us between Aberffraw and Caer Dathyl? He wants us on shore to meet them! Not out here on the water where we’re safe.”
“Safe to you isn’t exactly the same as to the rest of us,” Goronwy said.
“So now we’ll simply drown,” Rhun said, “and relieve him of his problem!”
“We must pray!” Siawn dropped to his knees beside Taliesin. They made an odd pair, Taliesin standing, chanting his exhortations in a language Rhiann didn’t understand, and Siawn kneeling, his hands clasped before his face, the thin, knotted rope with which he counted his prayers peeking through his fingers.
“It can’t be Arawn,” Cade said.
“Why not?” Rhiann said.
“He’s the Lord of the Underworld, not the sea,” he said.
“Well then maybe he’s gotten his friend, Llyr, the god of the sea and Father of Darkness to help him,” Rhiann said.
Cade glanced at her face. “That is a daunting thought.”
“Get back! Blast you! Do you want to end up with the fishes?” A new voice shouted from behind them. “Sire! You and the lady should not risk yourselves.”
Cade and Rhiann turned as the captain of the boat, an ancient fellow named Dai, rolled toward them on legs long used to this kind of weather. With a hand on each of their shoulders, he hauled them backwards, away from the prow of the boat and toward the open cabin. As the deck of the boat rose again in front of them, they fell into it.
“Such idiocy!” Dai said. The boat crested the wave and he staggered back to the rudder. Rhiann heard him yelling at Taliesin and Siawn, who finally obeyed him and gave up their vigil.
Rhiann lay on her stomach on the floor. Cade had rolled onto his back a few feet away. She pressed her face to the cool boards, and after a breath or two, began to laugh. Soon Cade chuckled beside her, and it was a relief to share the dark humor inherent in their peril.
“I am not a good sailor,” Rhiann said.
“I gather from our Captain’s comments that he doesn’t think much of me, either,” Cade said.
Rhiann laughed again but then was forced to curl up in a ball on the floor as the boat rose and fell, rose and fell, and the rain pounded on the roof. She lay there for a while, listening to the storm. Cade had his eyes closed, but he wasn’t sleeping. He never slept. She didn’t know how to begin to talk to him again; to cross the space between them, but she was willing to try if he was.
As it turned out, it was Cade who began. “You must understand, Rhiann, that I am a man out of legend, with neither soul nor substance. Sometimes I feel that I don’t really exist.”
“You do.” Rhiann reached out a hand to him, and then pulled it back, thinking better of it, not sure if she dared go that far. He was so resistant to human contact, even if he’d held her only a moment ago.
“Before I went to Aberffraw to greet your father,” Cade said, “I went to Din-Arth, the seat of Owain of Rhos. In the hall, I met an Irish trader.” Cade opened one eye to look at Rhiann and she gave him a half-smile in acknowledgement of the rarity of that: the Irish had raided the Welsh coast for the same number of years the Saxons had besieged the country from the east, but here was an Irishman who sought to trade. “He spent the evening telling stories to all who would listen.” Cade stopped.
“Go on,” Rhiann said.
“He mostly spoke of the sidhe faeries, beautiful young maidens endowed with the power of song and gifted with enchanting wiles.”
“We all know these stories. Every Welsh child is teethed on them. It’s why your men have accepted you. We’ve all heard them; dreamt them.”
Cade shook his head. “You haven’t heard about me, though, have you? Our tales don’t tell the whole story. I don’t know if we’ve forgotten, or never learned the truth. The Irishman explained that under the influence of such a sidhe, a man may commit any and every crime at her command. Then, when his soul is utterly black, the maiden carries her servant to the Underworld. He remains there forever, tortured by the same faery to whom he sold himself, now revealed in her true, hideous form.”
“Cade—” Rhiann began.
“One of the sidhe of whom the Irishman spoke stores the souls of the men she subdues in her cauldron, Rhiann,” Cade said.
His words chilled Rhiann far more than the wet and the rain.
“We seek Arawn,” Cade said. “We hope to close the black cauldron, but if I live to peer into it, what will I find?”
“You cannot lose hope,” Rhiann said. “Arianrhod left you alive, unlike the men in the tales. These are just stories with which to frighten a wide-eyed child on a winter night.”
“They were,” Cade said. “They were until now; until a man who lives them walked out of the myth and into the world.” Cade turned to look at Rhiann and she met his eyes. She couldn’t read the thoughts behind them, but she didn’t need to, as he spoke them. “I would give anything not to be this way, Rhiann.”
I wish you weren’t this way either. But she didn’t say it.
* * * * *
IF ANYTHING, THE STORM worsened in the next hours. Cade ordered each man to tie himself to the rail, while he and Rhiann were contained by a thick rope tied to an iron ring, screwed into the deck just for this purpose. They hung on for dear life.
“What is the good of being immortal if whenever the skills are needed, I’m as weak as a babe?” Cade said, at one point.
“The sun will go down,” Rhiann said. “You are nearly as strong as a normal human during the day; perhaps it’s just that you are so used to how you feel at night, it’s the contrast that is so startling, not your actual weakness.”
Cade smiled and then went so far as to laugh into his sleeve. “Even in the worst hours, you find a bright moment. I need that.”
Rhiann wanted to tell him that she needed him, but the boat tipped up just then. They were turned practically upside down as the prow rose to the crest of a wave. A rush of water coursed down the deck and swamped them. They both pushed up onto their elbows, coughing.
“Did I ever tell you about the time when Rhun and I were nine and he tried to go over the waterfall near Bryn y Castell in a bucket?” Cade said.
“No,” Rhiann said. “What happened?”
“You certainly aren’t going to tell her now.” Rhun appeared in the doorway, clutching the frame to keep from falling.
Cade smirked. “I saved Rhun’s life.” Cade then proceeded to show a side of him Rhiann hadn’t seen before, telling her story after story about his adventures with Rhun. Meanwhile, Rhun lay flat on the deck beside them, growling occasionally in feigned disagreement. It was Rhun who’d been the more mischievous of the two of them as a boy, always getting Cade into trouble, from which Cade then had to get them out.
In the midst of one particularly hilarious tale involving a fish, a broom, and their mother’s petticoat, Dai reappeared, although as he did so, the wind ripped the hat off his head, despite the ties around his chin, and flung it over the sea.
He cursed, and then laughed. “Makes a man happy to be alive, does it not?” He clung to the empty doorframe; then gave Rhiann a wicked grin and disappeared back into the storm.
“Men like him are drawn to the sea and are never happy when they are away from her,” Rhun intoned from his prone position on the floor. “I, myself, will never set foot on a boat again.”
But then Dai returned, this time not looking so cheerful. He ran to Cade and started working at the now sodden ropes that bound him to the floor.
“My lord. You and your men must leave the ship. We’re being pulled further out to sea and if you don’t leave now, it may be days before you reach the shore, if at all. The waves are too treacherous and I fear my ship will break up.”
“Days?” Rhiann said. “Are we to swim the distance, then?”
Dai moved to her side and began to fight with the ropes that tied her to the boat. The iron circle was the only thing that had kept her from sliding from one wall to the other as the ship rose and fell and she held onto it with both hands. “We will launch the dinghy. I’m afraid you’ll have to see your own way to shore.”
Rhiann stared at him in disbelief. “And what of you?”
Dai glanced at Rhiann and then looked away. “I will try to run out the storm. I will not abandon my ship unless death is the only other choice.” Dai caught Cade’s arm to stop him sliding down the deck. “I will not be responsible for the loss of you as well as my crew. To take the dinghy in to shore gives you the best chance of survival. I cannot offer you that on board my boat. Now, let’s go!”
Dai grasped Rhiann under the arm and hauled her to her feet while Cade and Rhun staggered together out of the cabin and across the deck. Instantly, a mixture of rain and sea water doused them. Rhiann watched in terror as another giant wave rose up and crashed over them. Rhiann herself lost her footing and would have been washed to the side of the boat and swept with the water overboard had not the iron grip of the captain kept her upright.
Dai tossed Rhiann into the dinghy and she fell forward, sprawled across Dafydd’s lap. He grasped her forearms and righted her, his face red from embarrassment. Rhiann also read concern in his eyes, and perhaps fear. She hadn’t spoken to him since their earlier conversation. When Cade climbed in beside her, she sat between them. If they all hadn’t been about to drown, it would have been awkward. When the next wave rose under the boat, Rhun cut it loose. Within a count of five, the dinghy had pulled away from the ship and the dark and rain obscured it from view.
The captain was right, for the most part, about the higher security in the smaller boat. With only the nine companions, rowing and resting in conjunction with the waves and with minimal hull and no cargo, the boat bobbed and floated on the top of the waves, riding them like a toy boat in a tub rocked by an energetic toddler. The companions were drenched and scared, but as the boat survived wave after wave without capsizing, Rhiann was gradually numbed into the belief that they were not actually going to die just yet.
She couldn’t see land. As the men with their oars fought on, Rhiann prayed that they knew where they were going. Back at Aberffraw, Cade had sketched a rough map of the coastline of the Llyn Peninsula. It seemed to Rhiann it would be easy to get thrown back towards Ireland, or worse, blown in circles until they died from dehydration.
Rhiann gripped the seat of the dinghy tightly.
“We’ll make it,” Dafydd said.
“I wouldn’t count on making it in the boat, however.” Cade unbuckled Caledfwlch. “Give me your swords.” Reluctance showed on each man’s face as he handed Cade his most prized possession. Cade stacked the six weapons in a bundle and belted them together, before slinging them over his shoulder with his own belt strap.
“If we go in, my lord, that will be too heavy for you to carry,” Siawn said. “You’ll drown.”
“Unlikely,” Rhun said.
With Cade’s action, whatever hope Rhiann had of surviving the day ebbed further. At last, however, the sky began to lighten at the bottom of the clouds and the clear outline of land appeared in front of them. With that first glimpse, the sea finally deemed she’d had enough. She reached under the boat and threw it forward, sending it with a mighty push towards land, but capsizing it in the process.
In an instant, Rhiann went from numbing cold to biting cold and her already sluggish brain grasped that they had very little time to reach shore if any of them were going to live. Desperate now that death was so near, she bobbed up for air. She took a deep breath, and then coughed, struggling against the sea.
“Don’t fight it! Let it lift you!” Cade still held the bundle of swords over his shoulder. With one powerful crawl he was beside her.
“I’m glad you can swim!” she said, shouting above the pounding of the surf and the rain. Rhiann struggled out of her cloak and shoved it away, just as Cade reached out and caught an oar that floated past.
“Rhiann!” The sea thundered in her ears, almost drowning out his words. “Stay with me!”
He took one of her frozen hands and put it on the oar and used the other to tread water. He then shot himself up and out of the water with a powerful kick in order to see around them. “The tide must be coming in. The waves are pushing us towards land.”
“Thank the Lord,” Rhiann said. “I was afraid we hadn’t a hope of reaching it.”
“Have you the strength to swim, Rhiann?” Cade said.
“And the alternative would be what?”
“Dying,” he said. Together, each with one hand on the oar, they stroked and kicked with the waves in the direction of the beach.
“Do you see anyone else?” Rhiann feared that none of their other companions could swim.
“Goronwy and Rhun are over to our left,” Cade said. “I saw their heads.”
“And the others?” Rhiann tried to push up above the wave to see better, but ended up swamping her nose and mouth instead.
“I don’t know,” Cade said. “Don’t worry about Dafydd, Rhiann. He’ll be all right. Save your energy for swimming.”
Rhiann let his words sink in and then took the plunge. “I’m not in love with Dafydd, Cade.”
“What did you say?”
He’d shouted the words at her and she realized that he hadn’t been able to hear what she’d said above the howling wind and spray. She just shook her head, letting the moment go and Cade didn’t ask her to repeat it.
From their experience at the Menai Strait, it had taken a quarter of an hour to swim the two hundred yards in a heavy current. Cade and Rhiann were less than half a mile from the shore, and it took them twice that, at least. The sea itself aided them in the end, pushing them forward, and eventually they found themselves crawling through the surf on their knees. Sobbing with relief, Rhiann collapsed on the sandy beach.
