Chapter 93: The Divide

The sound of skittering gravel woke Herrwn up.

With the vestiges of his dream lingering, he seemed to be in two places at once—on the brink of a windswept cliff and by the edge of a blazing bonfire. His left hand was still clutching the bush that he’d taken hold of hours earlier; his right was reaching out to the fading image of a beautiful boy, engulfed in flames, who was in turn stretching a hand out to him.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep. In fact, just before he did, he’d made up his mind that it was time to stop thinking about the past and go back to the hut where he’d left Gwenydd and Darbin arguing over which path to take in the morning—the more direct upper route or the longer but less rugged lower one.

There were strong arguments for—or, rather, against—either choice.

The upland route, with its steep climb up a slippery trail and long, treacherous traverse across the crest of the nearly sheer rock wall above them, was perilous. The rain that had soaked their outer clothes earlier in the day had turned that higher ridge white. Staring up at it by the failing daylight, Darbin had shaken his head while Gwenydd, hugging her daughter to her chest, declared that a single snowfall didn’t mean the trail wasn’t passable. Darbin’s set expression had made it clear he was unconvinced.

Herrwn could see both sides of their dispute, and he understood Gwenydd’s vehemence. The lower path would take them leagues out of their way and force them to circle around the valley below them—which, though it appeared innocent from their vantage point, was the stronghold of their worst enemies and far too dangerous to consider crossing, even in disguise.

The question was not whether the lower route was the safer one. The question was how much longer it would take.

They’d never expected to be the fastest group, not with having to carry one or both of the children for much of the way, and not with Gwenydd being pregnant and tiring as quickly as she did. Those were the first two reasons that in over two months of travel, they had covered only a fraction of the distance to their destination. The third was that the pretense that Darbin was a traveling tinker worked entirely too well.

The first day of their trek, they’d covered no more ground than a man without packs or children could cross in a few hours. By evening, it had begun to drizzle, and the temperature was falling. Weary and footsore, with little Gwylen whining and littler Darfel on the verge of a tantrum, they had risked seeking shelter at the outermost of the half dozen huts that constituted the first habitation they’d encountered.

At their knock, the rough-hewn door had cracked open, a grizzled face had peered out, and a guarded voice had muttered, “We gave all we had to spare to the last beggars who passed through.”

While Gwenydd started to back away, Darbin held his ground, pleading that his children were cold and offering to share the food they had in exchange for a place on the floor for the night. There was a long pause before the gruff voice muttered, “Just one night!” and the door opened.

Once inside, Darbin had said, with reasonable honesty, that he was a smith traveling with his family from a distant village in the southeast, where he’d been displaced by a Saxon rival, to begin a new life with kin in Celtic kingdoms to the north.

“A smith, you say?” Their host’s sullen expression brightened. “Maybe you could fix a thing or two while you’re here.”

The problem, it turned out, was not getting shelter for the night but leaving in the morning—in fact, it was midday before Darbin finished enough tinkering to be able to make a polite exit.

That had set the pattern of their journey. Wending their way from one small settlement to another, Darbin had bartered his skills for food and shelter. Most of the places they’d stopped in were, like the first, without a skilled artisan of their own, and the backlog of metal utensils in need of repair could and sometimes did keep him working for days. In the last village, there’d been a smith, an older man with no sons, who’d all but adopted Darbin on first sight and would have been more than willing to have them stay on and make their home with him.

It had been, so far as Herrwn could see, only out of courtesy that Darbin had sounded so regretful at declining the offer—and he further supposed he’d felt a need for extra civility after Gwenydd had turned her back on their host mid-conversation, gathered the children, and hustled them out the door.

Herrwn assumed that Gwenydd’s uncharacteristic abruptness was a reflection of her worry over whether they would get to their meeting place by the spring equinox. He himself was worried about that—and about what they would do if the others went on without them.

As tired as he was after a hard day’s travel and a long night spent in contemplation, Herrwn realized that it was his responsibility as their chief priest to go back inside and see whether the two had managed to reach an agreement on their own and to adjudicate the unresolved issues if they had not. He certainly did not intend to fall asleep, but only to gather his strength when he closed his eyes. And it had seemed that he was awake rather than dreaming when he heard the sound of footsteps. In that dream, he opened his eyes to see Darbin rush by, his shoulders hunched with the weight of a leather pack that towered above his head. After him came Gwenydd, her pregnant belly bulging out in front of her as though she were carrying an ox calf instead of a human baby. Behind Gwenydd came Gwylen and Darfel, holding hands and skipping merrily along the path. Darbin’s sister, Mai, who’d grown taller in the hours since Herrwn had seen her last, skipped along after Gwylen and Darfel, calling out, “Hurry, Grandfather, hurry!” as she passed.

Afraid of being left behind, he struggled to his feet, picked up his staff, and started after them. The trail they were taking went neither up nor down but straight into a forest so thick and tangled he had to fight his way through its grasping branches. He finally broke out of it and into an open meadow just as the others reached the entrance to a cave in the side of a cliff on the far side of the field.

Still at the end of the line, Mai turned to wave him on, again crying out, “Hurry, Grandfather, hurry!”

Dashing through waist-high grass and flowers, he entered the cave just moments behind her, only to find that the group had once again gone on ahead but had left him a lighted candle.

Taking the candle in one hand and gripping his staff in the other, he trudged along the long, dark corridor, which seemed to twist and coil as if he were in the bowels of a gigantic snake.

Suddenly the way straightened, and he saw a light, flickering and faint, in the distance. His first thought was that it was the others coming back for him, but as he moved toward it he realized he was coming to the end of the tunnel, and light, bright and welcoming, was pouring in from outside. He rushed the rest of the way, stopping only when he reached the end to look before he stepped out.

He expected to see the sun, but it was still night. The light pouring through the cavern’s entrance came not from the sun but from a blazing bonfire. Drawn to its warmth, he left the cave and joined a surging, noisy throng of villagers. Guessing he’d stumbled into a rustic festival, he pushed his way through the crowd. It was only when he got close enough to feel the welcome heat of the fire that he saw, to his shock and dismay, there was someone tied to a stake at the fire’s center, writhing in agony and struggling to break free.

As horrified by the cruel taunts of the other onlookers as by the suffering of their victim, Herrwn watched the ropes give way. Suddenly free, the captive stepped away from the stake and walked toward the fire’s edge, his body encased in flames.

The crowd’s jeers turned to shrieks of terror that filled the air as they turned and fled into the forest, leaving Herrwn alone. Dazzled by the dancing light, he rubbed his eyes, squinted, and leaned as close as he dared, trying to see the strange figure through the fiery wall that separated them.

As the blazing man came closer, Herrwn saw that he was young, hardly more than a boy, and had red hair that waved and curled. Smiling a sweet, elfin smile, he held out his glowing hands. Without hesitation, Herrwn stretched out his own hands—determined to pull his brother to safety or else to reach across the barriers of space and time and join him.

Just before their fingers touched, an urgent voice intruded, calling, “Wait, Master, stay still. Do not move.”

Later, after they’d come to talk freely with each other, Darbin would tell Herrwn how he’d only come out to look for him as an excuse to break away from arguing with Gwenydd, admitting, “I thought you’d be practicing your recitations and was hoping you’d let me listen while Gwenydd calmed down—but when I saw your staff laying there at the edge of the cliff, I ran to look over the side and saw you sitting on a ledge that was about to give way and hanging on to a bush that was going to go along with you when it did.”

With no time to run for a rope, Darbin had taken off his belt, looped it around a stump he thought might hold, wrapped the other end twice around his hand, and leaned over the bank, the rocks and gravel slipping out from under him as he pleaded, “Please, Master, you must give me your hand, and when I have it and say, ‘Now!’ you must let go of the bush.”

It was the compelling urgency in Darbin’s voice that made Herrwn obey. He held up his free hand and felt the smith’s hand clamp, viselike, around his wrist at the same time that earth and gravel crumbled away beneath him.

With one hand holding the loop of his belt, one knee set on solid ground, and his other foot hanging over the edge, Darbin hauled Herrwn onto the bank, getting him fully onto it before he let go of the belt, shoved off with his heels, and rolled them both safely back from the ledge as the lower part of it gave way and slid into the valley below.

Now fully awake, Herrwn sat up and gave what he hoped was the proper response to a rescue he wasn’t sure he’d wanted. “That was most kind of you—only did you not put yourself in undue danger on my behalf?”

“Not as much danger as I would have been in if I’d had to tell Gwenydd I’d let you fall off the cliff!” Clearly appalled at what he’d just said, Darbin clapped his hand over his mouth. Herrwn, however, nodded solemnly as he replied, “I, too, have been the consort to a high priestess, and I believe you are right.”

For some reason this struck them both as hilarious, and they sat there side by side, their legs stretched out in front of them, and laughed until they had to stop to catch their breath.

Recovering first, Darbin got up, retrieved Herrwn’s staff, and helped him to his feet.

Herrwn gripped his staff with one hand and wiped the tears from his cheeks with the other. “So then, Darbin, on which road will you take us this morning?”

Darbin sighed. “You are asking me?”

While there had not yet been time for Herrwn to fully examine the layered meanings of his dream, the first part of it—Darbin leading the way and carrying the enormous pack on his shoulders—was clear.

“It is you who has spoken with those who have knowledge of the outside world, and you on whom we all depend for our survival.”

“You agree with me, then? And will tell Gwenydd to be reasonable?”

“I agree the burden is yours and so the choice must be. As for telling your consort, a high priestess in the early throes of pregnancy, to be reasonable, I would not attempt it. But if you will remain out here, I will go in to speak with her—having, I believe, some power of persuasion and also having had the honor of being one of those to whom she swore quite vehemently that, loving you as she did, she would follow you anywhere.” Herrwn cleared his throat. “When we come out, it is my advice that, should Gwenydd say she wishes to take the lower and safer route, you have the wisdom to nod and say no more.”

Whether it was due to Herrwn’s powers of persuasion or Gwenydd’s recovery of her common sense, they took the longer path when they left the wayside hut in the morning.