Rhian and George dropped off as Isolda pulled up in the manor yard. They offered to help her unload, but she waved them off as others came from the stable to meet her.
Rhian checked the position of the sun nervously. “We must hurry. Rhys and Idris are expecting us.”
They walked quickly into the back hall and into Gwyn’s council room where they found Idris, Rhys, and Ceridwen already present. Food was laid on a sideboard, cold meats from last night’s meal. George and Rhian filled plates and joined the others at the council table.
Gwyn greeted them. “Just in time. Ceridwen told us of the wounds on Iolo’s body and the marks on the saddle. Idris, please report your findings.”
Idris spoke of their early morning tracking expedition. At the appropriate time, Rhian pulled out the broken spell-stick and placed it on the table for all to see.
Ceridwen bent over it without touching it directly. “This is made by one of my kind. The writing’s clear enough: ‘Be thou masked in wind and fury.’” She touched it carefully with one finger. “It wasn’t made here in Annwn.”
She looked up. “This was given to someone who couldn’t work his own disguise.”
Idris continued with the tale and described the recent tunnel through the palisade.
“But this isn’t possible,” Ceridwen said, rising. “I must see this.” She made as if to leave immediately and Gwyn gestured her back down.
“You and Creiddylad shall inspect it when we’re done here.” To Idris, he said, “Did you post a guard?”
“No. We were fairly discreet when we found it and it’s possible the enemy doesn’t know what we discovered. I left Thomas Kethin there to loiter about plausibly and try to spot any unusual interest.” He looked at Ceridwen. “I don’t think we should make our knowledge plain with an inspection, my lord. Better an escape route we know about, than plugging this one and not finding its replacement.”
Gwyn nodded, but Ceridwen was still troubled.
“I must see it somehow, though. I don’t know how this damage could be done as you describe, and therefore I don’t know if we’re vulnerable in some more serious way along the entire palisade.”
Gwyn acknowledged her concern. “You and Creiddylad will go out riding this afternoon, with Thomas in attendance. No one should see you inspect the damage from the outside if you’re cautious. We’ll avoid drawing attention to the inside portion until we have some better sense of our enemy’s plans.”
Idris finished up with the fruitless search at the baths.
Ceridwen then took up the tale. “I’ve asked among the guards about traffic and that won’t be finished until tomorrow morning as they come off shift. But I can tell you already that it’s unlikely to be helpful. On the one hand, there’s been quite a bit of gate traffic, both from our guests and their entourage and from our own people. On the other hand, with this tunnel, why would our enemy need to use the gates?”
Idris said, “It was in my mind that he may have used the gates on the way out, when he was in a hurry and use of the tunnel entrance might have been seen. Clearly he returned in secret, as you suggest.”
George felt obliged to speak up. “There’s one guest servant I saw at dinner who caught my attention with his eager watching of the entrance of the guardsmen. He seemed pleased while everyone was shocked at the package. I don’t want to make too much of it, but he bothered me.”
Rhian said, “You know the man, the one with the white streaks.”
Gwyn nodded. “Part of Creiddylad’s staff. I haven’t noticed him much.”
“That’s because he stays out of your way,” she said. “I’ve seen him duck into other rooms when he sees you coming.”
“Oh?” Gwyn said, with sudden interest.
George was alarmed for Rhian’s safety. “Does he know you’ve seen him do that?”
“I don’t care. He’ll not scare me in my own house.”
Idris said, “Unwise. An enemy discovered and desperate is never to be despised.”
Rhian persisted. “He follows me around, and sometimes Rhys. I think I’ll pay him back and watch him, instead.”
Gwyn looked at her sternly. “You’ll do no such thing. Even if your suspicions have merit, better not to alarm a spy than to scare him into deeper hiding or, worse, force him to hand off the task to an unknown confederate. We have other ways of keeping an eye on him.” He looked at Ceridwen, who nodded thoughtfully.
Rhian spoke up again. “We ran errands in the village today, it’s why we were late. Do you know who’s at the inn?”
She recounted their encounter. “If our kinsman hadn’t warned me, I would have blundered in unprepared. I think he took us for servants. There’s something wrong about him. I don’t see any reason for him to be hanging around.”
It was Rhys’s turn to look alarmed. “Are you sure he didn’t recognize you? No one greeted you by name?”
“George made me keep the glamour up till we were out of sight of the inn, and had me resume it on our way back down the street later.”
Rhys nodded at George approvingly. “A wise precaution. How did you know he was glamoured?”
“I couldn’t exactly tell you. Can’t work very well if you can see through it,” he said.
“But normally you can’t detect a glamour,” Ceridwen said. “Did you know it was there, Rhian?”
Rhian shook her head.
Ceridwen summarized their results so far. “So, it seems clear that the attack on Iolo was made by a man disguised by magic, probably someone else’s magic, implying he has none of his own. He may have used artificial claws as weapons, presumably to suggest a creature not a man. He may have written the note and hung the hands, or that might have been done by a confederate. He knows of a breach in our defenses, made with unknown means, and perhaps may have created it himself. He’s likely here now, under our noses, and he may know of our discoveries. He’s made threats of additional violence, referring to a past history of some kind. He’s most likely one of the guests or part of their entourage, given the foreign nature of the twine.”
“In addition,” she continued, “we have two unusual characters who may or may not deserve our suspicions and who may or may not have had anything to do with the murder, or each other.”
George said, “It’s not too late to bring back the bloodhounds and have them match the spell-stick to a person, if they went through the entire population, though with each passing hour that becomes more difficult. You could also do a search, looking for the weapon or anything else that matches the evidence, like the twine.”
“Neither of these are attractive alternatives,” Gwyn said. “They might not work, and at best will implicate just one person, assuming the murderer and the note-writer are the same. Much worse, they will certainly alert the enemy, who’s likely to be more than one man acting alone. Even if we catch one, what about the possible others?”
“No,” he said decisively. “We’ll continue in more subtle ways. Ceridwen will finish her interviews so that we can be seen to be looking into it. The inspection of the palisade damage will be done as covertly as possible. We’ll look into these two people but without alerting them. Whatever we find, we must assume there are other enemies we haven’t yet identified.”
He stood. “Iolo was killed for a larger purpose. Bad enough that he was the victim, but worse that it wasn’t even personal. We don’t know the full purpose yet, but it must revolve around Iolo as huntsman, and therefore around the great hunt in two weeks.
“The hunt will happen. It must happen, both for its own sake and our realm’s benefit, but also because I won’t be moved in this way like a pawn by powers that wish me and mine no good.” This last was spoken with quiet ferocity.
The others rose from the table and moved to the door, but Gwyn asked George to stay, closing the door behind them and returning to the council table.
“I haven’t had the time to speak with you at length and would like to know you better. Can you tell me more about your arrival yesterday morning?”
George was eager to discover why, and how, he’d gotten here. Maybe this time he could get someone to agree on a plan to send him back.
He described how he’d followed the sound of hounds along a strange path and been distracted by the deer, before coming off at the unexpected jump.
“So, you heard the pack baying, and that’s what sent you to them. Was it your pack you heard, or mine?”
“I thought it was mine at the time, of course, but now I think not, that it must have been yours.”
Gwyn said, “They bayed at the murder. So, at the moment of Iolo’s death, the way was opened to you.” He paused. “You were brought here, I think.”
“By you?”
“No, not by me. What was the deer like, that you saw?”
“A big buck with a magnificent rack. The noise drew my eye and I had a clear view. He was quite pale, with dark eyes, and he just stood there and watched.”
“I detect other hands at work in this,” Gwyn concluded.
“Does that mean you can’t send me back?” George’s heart sank.
“It means I should understand why you’re here, first,” Gwyn said.
Gwyn continued, “Tell me more about your encounter with the stranger at the inn. What made you think he was a threat?”
“I’ve thought about that, and I can’t say. It’s almost as if he smelt wrong, though that’s not it. I knew his appearance was a lie.”
“Oh? Could you tell that Rhian was glamoured?”
“Well, I saw her altered form, of course, and I knew what she looked like normally, but, yes, I think I also knew it was false independently of that.”
Gwyn stood and his appearance abruptly changed to that of an older man with a stooped back. “What do you see?” he asked with a quavering voice.
“I see and hear the change, but I know in some fundamental way that it’s not true. I can’t see your real form directly, but I know it’s there. It’s hard to explain.”
Gwyn dropped the glamour and sat back down, thoughtfully. “This isn’t typical for one of us. A glamour works unless some counter magic prevents it. There’s no sensing of the true form otherwise. A skilled man can hold a glamour for a year and not be detected, as Pwyll did.”
Who was Pwyll, George wondered.
“Tell me of your father,” Gwyn said.
With some reluctance, George opened up the sunny memories of his childhood, blighted by the ending.
“Conrad Traherne. There’s not much to tell, since I was a child when they died. My mother, your granddaughter Léonie, met him in Wales when she was about twenty-two. There was some family story, never very clear to me, of getting lost in a woods and rescued at dusk. He worked as a gamekeeper and was away for days at a time while my mother wrote at her desk. I don’t know where the money came from, but we had a snug little cottage off against the woods by itself, with our neighbors at a distance. I had my pony and freedom to explore, and life was very good.”
George looked off into the past. “He was a lovely man when he was home. He would tell me stories and take me into the woods for adventures. He had this amazing knack for spotting animals and not disturbing them, and I would try to imitate him on my own when he wasn’t there, to make him proud of me.”
He glanced back at Gwyn, who was listening attentively. “I don’t really know what happened. One evening they went out together for a walk, and they didn’t return. I was nine years old, and sick with worry by morning. We had no phone. I was just about to take my pony to the next farm to find someone when a policeman knocked on the door to tell me there’d been an accident.
“He wouldn’t say much. I sneaked a look at his notebook when he was washing up, and saw something about wild animals. That’s also where I saw my father’s right name for the first time: Corniad Traherne. I showed them my mother’s address book and they contacted my grandfather. I met him the next day, and he took me back to Virginia.”
And how strange it is, he marveled, that I so rarely think of them. I never went through their things when I got older. I know grandfather has them. No longer. As soon as I get back I’m going to start asking questions.
George went to the sideboard to refill his glass and sat down again. His mind was in turmoil. How’s it possible that I never asked? It’s as if a veil’s been torn away and now I can see how odd that is.
Aloud, he said, “I never heard of any other family on my father’s side, but I don’t actually know.”
“What about your own family?” Gwyn asked. “Your wife and children? Who’s waiting for you?”
Who, indeed, George thought. Aloud, he said, “I’ve never married, and there’s no one special at the moment.” He looked down at that. He wanted children and was unhappy he hadn’t found the right woman yet.
“Still, I have a good career. I run a small software firm,” he smiled at Gwyn’s blank look, “but I’m at a point where I’m, well, bored by it.” There, he’d said it, admitted it out loud. “I live on a small farm, and visit my grandparents regularly. I go foxhunting. It’s a very quiet, dutiful life.”
“And you find it constraining and unsatisfying, I think,” Gwyn said.
George shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Yes,” he said shortly. “But it’s what a man does, making his way in the world. No one said it had to be fulfilling.”
Gwyn rested one elbow on his chair and gestured with his hand while he summarized.
“You’re certainly my descendant, but you have skills I don’t recognize in glamoury. Your father is, at the least, unusual. Someone has brought you here, when we have a need for friends and a suspicion of enemies. I think I may know now who the player is on that side, an old but tricky ally.”
George hoped for more details but Gwyn went off in an unexpected direction instead and George held his tongue.
“Let me tell you a bit about us and our current situation.”
“I am old, and older than old. I remember the coming of the new humans before the ice, watched it push them south in the old world, and watched them return when it retreated. My sire and his are older still. We die, in time, but the longer we live, the more powerful we become. Unless we die by violence.”
George was prepared for something like this after last night’s history lesson from Eurig, but it still took his breath away.
“We form families, of course, but many of our marriages are alliances of power and don’t last more than a few decades at best. We have children, but not many and not often, and they make their own way in the world. Eventually, even that stops. I expect no more siblings, but now and then I’m still tempted myself.”
George smiled privately at Eurig’s judgment last night about Gwyn being “fond of the ladies.”
Gwyn continued, “The great houses mind their realms with smaller lords in their retinue, and they strive with each other over old grudges, new ambitions, or just out of boredom. Not all of us take the path of direct power; there are craftsmen, warriors, solitary dwellers, travelers, scholars, and all the flavors of any people that you might expect. We live long enough that many try their hand at a variety of activities and become expert in several.
“Some of us, like me, have children outside our own kind. Most of those lead short lives by our reckoning, in the outerworld, and come to nothing in particular, but sometimes they come back to us with true skills and some powers. A few are living here now, though none of mine.”
“It would be interesting to meet them,” George said. “Do you yourself have children in the current generation? What of Rhys and Rhian?”
“I have no young children at the moment. You must realize that, with our long lives, we rarely know our much older or younger siblings well, so our greatest bonds are with our parents and our own children. To connect us across the lineages, we typically foster each other’s children. It broadens their education, and a foster-parent can be more objective about discipline and training than a natural parent.
“When my brother Edern’s son Rhys died, I offered to foster his young children. The Rhys you’ve met is Rhys Vachan, Rhys the younger. He and his sister have lived here for nine years. He’s now twenty-two, and she fourteen. It’s quite unusual for full siblings to be so close in age, and they wouldn’t be parted from each other, so they came together when she was old enough. They’re dear to me and I hope they’ll stay all their lives, but in any case I’m responsible for their rearing and, most importantly, their safety.”
Gwyn paused. “I wasn’t always the Prince of Annwn. It was a great honor to receive the realm, but many of my enemies date from that time. I was quick to remove it to the new world and to keep the ways obscure until I was better prepared, but for many centuries now we’ve fallen into a regular practice at the time of the great hunt of opening our ways to all who would come, as if we were all at peace. You understand, better to appear to be so strong that you needn’t show concern, yes?”
George nodded. This was all very interesting but it wasn’t getting him home.
“Now we’re paid for that with treachery and murder. And in truth I have even older enemies, in particular Gwythyr ap Greidawl. He was at one time betrothed to my youngest sister Creiddylad until I rescued her, at her request. It was a bitter fight, and many died at my hand whose families still wish me ill. For this old grudge I must meet Gwythyr every Nos Galan Mai at the spring equinox and strive again. Sometimes I win, sometimes not, and Creiddylad leads her own life at our father’s in the meantime, or on the lands that I gave her, accordingly.
“The great hunt is the heart and purpose of Annwn. All the mighty families come to see the world’s justice meted out. There are lesser hunts throughout the year but the one on Nos Galan Gaeaf is the one where all the ways are thrown open and no one can predict who will be pursued and where they will lead. For the great hunt to fail, or not to happen, would be disastrous.
“This murder of Iolo is a blow aimed at the great hunt, at the balance of the world, and at my realm. I can’t allow it to succeed. You understand?”
George nodded again.
“Good. That’s why I want you to serve as huntsman on that night.”
