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Table of Contents
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Book four in The Last Pendragon Saga
The Pendragon’s Quest
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by
Sarah Woodbury
The Pendragon’s Quest
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ALTHOUGH THE DARK FORCES of Arawn are defeated, the Saxons have massed on the border of Wales, aiming for nothing less than the complete subjugation of the Welsh people. But defeating an army of Saxons is only the first step Rhiann, Cade, and their companions must take if they are to stop Mabon from claiming dominion over the human world for all eternity.
The Pendragon’s Quest is the fourth book in The Last Pendragon Saga.
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ALTHOUGH I’M SURE THAT many, many of you have perfect retention of the cast and plot of The Last Pendragon Saga up until now, I must report that my own husband failed to retain the entirety of the plot up until now. I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!
So, a refresher:
In the opening chapter of The Last Pendragon, Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon (Cade), enters the court of Gwynedd after King Cadfael’s men ambushed and killed all of his men, including Cade’s foster father, Cynyr, on the road to Aberffraw. As Cadfael had married Cade’s mother (Alcfrith), Cade had believed that Cadfael’s overtures towards him were genuine. A mistake.
Rhiann, Cadfael’s daughter (not by Alcfrith), rescues Cade from hanging and they flee Aberffraw. In the process, Rhiann learns that Cade has been changed by the goddess Arianrhod into one of the sidhe (of a sort, anyway). Eventually, they connect with Cade’s men: Rhun (his foster brother), Goronwy, Bedwyr, Taliesin, his seer and bard, Dafydd, Goronwy’s younger brother, and Geraint, one of Cade’s captains.
Word comes from the south (Llanllugan) that Saxons are encroaching into Wales and Cade leads his men—and Rhiann—into battle. It turns out that the Saxon force has combined with demons, who’ve been released from the Black Cauldron by Arawn, lord of the Underworld, and are controlled by Mabon, the son of Arawn and Arianrhod.
Adventures ensue, carrying into The Pendragon’s Blade and Song of the Pendragon, including the defeat of this combined demon/Saxon force at Llanllugan, the capture and rescue of Cade at Caer Ddu, the crowning of Cade as King of Gwynedd at Aberffraw, where he is reunited with his mother, and the assault on Arawn’s lair underneath Caer Dathyl by Cade and his friends.
Song of the Pendragon ends in a clearing outside of Caer Dathyl. Arianrhod has rescued them from Arawn’s cavern and set them to rights. She visits Cade, tells him that Mabon has been returned to her, and blesses him.
Thank you for reading The Pendragon’s Quest. Enjoy!
Arianrhod
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“YOU CAN’T RELY ON HOPE, Sister. You know that.”
I leaned over the rail of the boat, trailing my fingers in the water and ignoring my brother, Gwydion, as I usually did. He might be a great warrior, and my senior by millennia, but what he didn’t know about matters of the heart could fill Taliesin’s great tome.
I grasped Gwydion’s hand as he helped me onto the shore and then tilted my head to feel the warmth of the sun on my face. Mist had descended on the water as I’d made the journey across the sea, moving from the human world to that of the sidhe. But the sun always shone on my Isle of Glass.
“Arianrhod—”
“I am listening, Gwydion, but you have never been a parent and cannot know what it means to have a son. Mabon is my child—”
“You may wear a glamour in the human world,” Gwydion said, “but I have never seen it cloud your thinking as it has in this case. You can’t fix this merely by wishing. Mabon has left you, and if you can’t find him before another does, he will face the greatest punishment our kind can inflict on one of its own.”
“I know that,” I said.
And I did. If the Sidhe Council, of which I was a member and which my mother and father had ruled through all the ages of the world, discovered that Mabon sought the Thirteen Treasures of Britain, they would strip him of his powers and condemn him to walk the earth as a human man. The Treasures were great gifts of the sidhe to the Welsh, the possession of only a handful of which would give Mabon enough power to usurp my father’s seat.
My father, Beli, had described his command of the Council as akin to riding an untamed horse. With the coming of the Christian God and the failing of the old ways, it seemed at times as if he’d dropped the bridle. He would want to make an example of Mabon to prove that this was not the case.
Mabon might not survive such a fall from grace.
“What of your champion? This Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon—can he help?” Gwydion said.
“Not this time,” I said.
Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon, the future High King of Wales, might prevail over his Saxon enemies and thwart my son’s plans again, but I couldn’t depend upon it, not without interfering in the human world myself more than my father would condone.
“Besides, he hates Mabon.”
Gwydion snorted laughter. “For good reason. But Cadwaladr doesn’t hate you. He has served you well in the past.”
I had given Cadwaladr the power of the sidhe, and because of that gift, he had succeeded in banishing Arawn, Mabon’s father, to the Underworld. Arawn, at least, wouldn’t be interfering in human affairs for some time to come. In addition, Beli had spoken harshly to him of his foolish actions—of stepping beyond his mandate as the Lord of the Underworld. That Arawn had done so out of love for Mabon couldn’t excuse the error. It was probably better not to dwell upon what my father might say about my own meddling, which, admittedly, was unlike me. I hadn’t had a true champion among humankind for centuries—I hadn’t wanted one nor seen the need.
“Will you help me, Gwydion?” I said. “Will you find Mabon for me before our father discovers what he’s trying to do?”
Gwydion gazed over my shoulder, towards Wales, though of course he couldn’t see it from where we stood. For a moment his face was shadowed, as if a cloud had crossed the sun. But that couldn’t be ... could it?
“I have distanced myself from the human world of late. You know that.”
“The bard, Taliesin—” I said.
“No longer sees. He is the last of his line. Given that, I’ve seen little use in furthering my patronage.” Gwydion focused on me and though his face was bright, my memory of the shadow hadn’t faded. “It is a fine line we walk, Arianrhod. I sometimes wonder why we ever desired interaction with humans at all.”
I couldn’t make sense of that so I changed the subject. “Speak to Taliesin now. He will not have forgotten you.”
“I’ll think about it,” Gwydion said.
“What do you fear?” The words burst from me, though I’d never known Gwydion to fear anything.
“We are fading, Arianrhod. Our power wanes, even as Father strives to rule the council as he always has, hanging onto his dignity with both hands—while Mabon tries to take it from him.”
“The sun still shines—”
“Don’t be a child, Arianrhod,” Gwydion said. “A darkness has crept into the world, filling the chasm between us and this new God of the Christians. It stands now as a barrier between me and my servant, Taliesin.”
“I don’t believe it,” Arianrhod said. “You are the son of Beli. You can do anything.”
Gwydion pursed his lips. “If I do as you ask, if I renew my ties with Taliesin, you must promise me something.”
“Anything.” Hope rose within me. Gwydion was wavering.
“You must go to our father and reassure him of our loyalty. You are the goddess of battle, as well as time and fate. Look to your duties and stop trying to protect your son. He does not deserve your love.” Gwydion’s eyes bored into me.
“And Cadwaladr?” I said.
“Leave him to his fate.” Gwydion turned away, ending the conversation. He strode away from me, into the mist.
“I don’t know if I can do that.” Though I’d allowed my brother to vanish before I answered him.
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Tonight the hall of my lord is dark,
With neither fire nor bed.
I will weep a while, then still myself to silence.
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Tonight the hall of my lord is dark,
With neither fire nor song.
Who will give me peace?
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Tonight the hall of my lord is dark,
With neither fire nor hope.
Grief for you overtakes me.
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Darkness descends on the hall of my lord
The blessed assembly has departed, praying
That good comes to those of us who remain.
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—Taliesin, The Black Book of Gwynedd
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March, 655 AD
Cade
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“WAKE UP!”
Cade had been dreaming of the battle in Arawn’s cavern. His stomach hurt from clenching it in his fear and desperation. Even with Arawn’s defeat, his people were still in danger. Geraint and Tudur would soon face a host of demons which Arawn had unleashed, in such numbers as Geraint could never hope to counter.
“Goddamn it, Cade, don’t scare us like this.” That was Rhun’s voice. His foster brother had always been one for telling Cade what to do.
“Oh please, please, wake up, Cade.”
Cade’s eyes snapped open.
Rhiann gazed down at him, her face six inches from his. They looked at each other for one of her heartbeats before she threw herself at him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I was so worried! It was as if you were really dead!”
Cade’s arms came around Rhiann. He reveled in the feel of her, kissed her forehead, and patted her several times on the back, trying to get her to look at him again. Tears tracked down her cheeks as he brushed her hair out of his face with one hand.
After another reassuring look, Rhiann released him and sat back on her heels. Cade pushed onto both elbows, studying his friends who formed a circle around him: Rhun, whose deeper voice he’d heard; Dafydd, a bit wide-eyed, clenching and unclenching his large fists; Goronwy and Hywel, mirror images of each other, not in looks but in temperament, their swords out and half-turned away, ever watchful for potential menace; and Taliesin, who gazed at him reflectively while leaning on his staff.
“From the seer who no longer sees, I, Taliesin, speak of Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon—who calls usurpers to account, who vanquishes demons, who, with his magic sword, banished Arawn to the Underworld—”
“All right, all right. Enough.” Cade scrambled to his feet. “Next you’ll say something about escaping Aberffraw without help, or battling the storm that shipwrecked us in the world of the sidhe and saving you single-handed.” He glared at Taliesin. “None of which would be true.”
Cade’s critique didn’t seem to affect Taliesin. “You are not normally one to sleep.”
“I haven’t slept too long, have I? The sun isn’t yet up, is it?” Cade checked the skyline above the trees that surrounded the clearing in which the companions found themselves. No light showed on the eastern horizon and Cade allowed himself a moment of relief. Then he noted the location of the moon, and stared at it, puzzled, for it was in the same spot it had been when Arianrhod had visited him after they defeated Arawn. He could have sworn their conversation had occurred hours ago, but if he’d really slept, perhaps that wasn’t something he had the ability to gauge.
“Not for a long while yet,” Rhun said. “Or, at least that’s my feeling. I don’t have a good sense of the hour.”
“Nor I, and that disturbs me.” Taliesin studied Cade some more. “Has something happened we should know about?”
Cade bit his lip. His friends weren’t going to like this. “Arianrhod visited me.” There was no good way to say it, except straight out.
Taliesin narrowed his eyes at Cade. “And ...”
“She apologized, not so much for giving me the power of the sidhe but for bringing us into such danger.”
“She apologized?” Rhun said. “That’s—that’s—”
Taliesin finished for him. “Unprecedented.”
“She also thanked us for doing what she could not,” Cade said.
“You’re being polite.” Goronwy glanced at Cade, flashed a smile, and then looked away again. “She thanked you, you mean.”
Cade had to acknowledge that Goronwy was right, though he hadn’t wanted to say it. “If that was an oversight on her part, allow me to thank you now, if not for her, then for myself. I couldn’t have defeated Arawn without you.”
“Modesty at last,” Goronwy said.
Cade ignored that, as Goronwy deserved. “She also gave me two gifts.”
Taliesin took a step towards Cade, his face paling. “Don’t tell me you accepted them! A gift from a goddess is never without price!”
Cade choked on a laugh. “Did I have a choice? Need I remind you how little control I have over the goddess?”
“That would be none,” Rhun said.
Taliesin nodded and subsided, his expression grudging. “She made you so you could do her bidding. I have not forgotten.”
“I would like to think these new gifts were in thanks and not in expectation of future services,” Cade said, “although I suppose I’ll have as little choice in the matter then as now, were she to ask more of me. As it is, she gave me the gift of sleep, as you saw.”
“So you were sleeping!” Rhiann said. “I could hardly credit it.”
“... and the ability to do this.” Cade reached for Rhiann again, pulling her to him. She fit perfectly in his arms—as he remembered from their brief interlude underneath Caer Dathyl—tucked under his chin with her slender arms tight around his waist, holding on. Laughter bubbled in his throat at how natural it felt to hold her.
“So this means you can touch me now—can touch any one of us—without fear of doing us harm?” Rhiann leaned back to look into Cade’s face.
“So it seems,” Cade said.
Rhun stooped to pick up Caledfwlch, which lay on the edge of the blanket, a yard from Cade’s feet. The companions gazed at the sword, and Rhun held it out. Rhiann took it, with a wary look at Cade. “You told me when we first met that your touch had the power to kill. I have seen you use it. And struggle to contain it.”
Cade had been unable to touch anyone—unless he meant to kill them—since Arianrhod had changed him from man to sidhe two winters earlier. From the moment he’d found Caledfwlch at the enchanted Caer Ddu, however, the sword had given him both a strength and a control over his power that he’d never known before. He’d only allowed himself to admit to loving Rhiann because of it, because the sword gave him a chance—a slim one, but a chance—at a normal life.
Rhiann drew the belt around Cade’s waist and buckled on his sword, fumbling a bit with the stiff leather. He studied her downturned head and then looked at Taliesin. It was he who would best understand what Arianrhod had done to him, and what she’d changed.
“I still have the power,” he said. “But it’s quiet, as if it’s waiting for me to use it rather than waiting to use me.”
“That’s all to the good,” Taliesin said, “but something tells me that Arianrhod isn’t finished with you yet.”
“And if she’s not done with Cade, we’re all in for it,” Rhun said.
“I’m sure you have the right of it,” Cade said, “but for now—”
“For now, we need to move,” Goronwy said. While they’d talked, he’d surveyed the entire perimeter of the clearing. It was thirty feet across, surrounded by leafless trees. A fire pit sat at its center, the flames still burning brightly, though to Cade’s knowledge, nobody had stoked it. “I, too, am confused about many things, but I do know that we still have the demons from Caer Dathyl to deal with. Geraint and Tudur need our help.”
Demons came in all shapes and sizes, often with horns or fur: the manifestation of a child’s nightmare, only worse. Much worse, because they weren’t created in a dream, but were real, sent through the black cauldron by Arawn, Lord of the Underworld, to haunt the fields and forests of Wales. Few were able to pass as human, as Cade could, and he’d met no other demon who possessed his particular gifts, if one could call them that, nor his degree of power. It seemed that Arianrhod had bestowed his affliction only on him.
“Where are we?” Rhun said. “That remains our most pressing question, although some information as to how we got here wouldn’t go amiss.”
Cade checked the moon again. It still hadn’t moved from its initial position. Come to think on it, the moon was nearly in the same place in the sky as when they’d entered the caverns underneath Caer Dathyl.
“As to how, we can certainly make a good guess,” Taliesin said. “Arianrhod took us from the cavern, set us to rights, and has put us on a path of her choosing. As to where—”
“I know where we are.” Dafydd turned slowly on one heel, studying the trees and the sky above them. “We’re still in Arfon, not far from Caer Dathyl. I came through here when I fled the fortress after Teregad gave me leave to go, back before I fell in with you.”
“He gave you leave to go, only to hunt you down afterwards,” Goronwy corrected his younger brother, “but that’s past and done. Are we near the road?”
“It lies a hundred yards to the west, no more.” Dafydd peered at the skyline. “I believe Arianrhod has placed us just to the north of where Geraint and Tudur were supposed to set up camp.”
“What—so now we can fly?” Rhun said.
Gone was the jesting tone of before. His words came out bitter, and Cade catalogued the list of crazed events that had happened to them in the last twelve hours, wondering which of them most troubled Rhun and caused his anger.
“How helpful of Arianrhod not to put us in the path of the oncoming demons,” Goronwy said. “Just think if she’d put us between them and Geraint’s camp.”
Cade eyed both Goronwy and Rhun, and then took charge before the others caught their discontent. “Lead on, Dafydd. It’s likely we have very little time, if we have any time at all, before the demons reach Geraint’s position.”
Dafydd set off at once through the trees, Taliesin close behind, the little light on the end of his staff lighting the way. Rhiann, who’d found her quiver and bow and slung them on her back, followed with Hywel. Cade, Goronwy, and Rhun brought up the rear.
“What’s gotten into you two?” Cade said, once the others had moved a bit ahead and the three of them could speak more privately.
He pushed through a blackberry bramble: the rich, sweet scent of sun-warmed berries saturated the air. In another life, Cade would have eaten them but now they would taste like nothing more than sawdust in his mouth. The bramble had found a niche at the edge of the trees, cascading over the edge of a rock as it sought sunlight, rather than thriving in the darker, shadier places, like raspberry or blackcurrant. Or me.
“This is wrong,” Rhun said. “I may not be sidhe, but even I can feel it.”
“Which part?” Cade said.
“Which part isn’t?” Goronwy said.
Rhun made a dismissive gesture. “Not so much the goddess, though I’m none too fond of the way she’s manipulated you—and through you all of us—these last weeks. But this is too easy, too pat.”
“We defeated Arawn—”
“Begging your pardon, my lord,” Goronwy said, “but we didn’t, not really. You may be sidhe and by that power able to silence him for a while, but his actions against us—against Wales—and our reactions, with the help of Arianrhod, are the start of what looks to me like open warfare between the gods—and maybe between the gods and men.”
“That’s exactly it.” Rhun nodded and punctuated his words with a finger to the sky. “The gods haven’t interfered in our world since the Romans came. They didn’t even step in to save Vortigern as he lay dying and the Saxons overran all of Britain but our small corner. Why do they arise now? And what role do we have to play in it? Do we have to be on Arianrhod’s side just because she made you? Are there other sides besides Arawn’s or Mabon’s?”
It had been Cade’s ancestor, Vortigern, who’d invited the Saxons into Britain after the Romans left, hoping they would stand as a buffer against the even more barbaric Picts who raided Briton’s shores at every turn. As he’d been fighting the Picts in the northeast, the Scots in the northwest, and the Irish along the coast of Wales all at the same time, one could hardly blame Vortigern for latching onto a convenient solution. He’d given up too much land to the Saxons, however, and was betrayed in the end by the very people he’d sought to befriend. Cade’s people had been fighting these interlopers ever since, backing farther into their mountains with every year that passed.
The Saxon lords had divided the Welsh into small pockets, with the western lands the last untouched bastion of Britain. As recently as two years ago, Cade’s uncle Arthur, the great king of Gwent, had sent a lone rider from his seat at Caerleon to Bryn y Castell to warn of the events to the south. Like his northern compatriots, Arthur had fought many battles against the Saxons and feared the Welsh would be reduced to ever shrinking circles of land, fighting back to back as the invaders attacked from all sides.
Cade’s birth father, Cadwallon, had formed an alliance with the Saxon King Penda of Mercia, in an attempt to forestall the attacks and regain land for the Welsh. Upon Cadwallon’s death, the usurper, Cadfael, had pledged his forces to the same treaty. But the Welsh had gained nothing from either alliance but time.
Cade swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I can’t answer any of that. And Taliesin ...” His voice trailed off.
“Doesn’t see anymore. Yes, we know,” Rhun said, “even if he tries to make light of it.”
Cade didn’t know how to respond to that either, and they continued in silence, eventually gaining on their companions. Cade was both disgruntled by his friends’ observations—since he’d been thinking things were going pretty well for once—and dismayed that he’d heard truth in their words.
Behind Cade, back in his more cynical, jaded, and ultimately humorous shell, Goronwy grumbled yet again about knights not walking.
Rhiann overheard, glanced back at him, and shot him a wicked smile. “You know, Goronwy. You say that knights don’t walk, but since I’ve known you, you’ve done quite a bit of walking. Either knights do walk, or perhaps you’re not a real knight?”
Goronwy growled back at her, and Rhiann’s eyes lit with amusement. She knew not to take him seriously, and Cade’s heart warmed to have her with him. That part of the world was going right at least. He was just happy to have all his friends in the same place and in one piece. Although Arianrhod hadn’t realized it, that was reward enough.
As the companions trotted on, Cade kept checking the sky, expecting the sun to rise at any moment, but it stubbornly refused to show itself. Normally, that would have pleased him, but the oddness of not being able to locate himself in the dark, or in time, only disturbed him instead.
He tried to pass off his disorientation as a result of the heavy cloud cover that had blown in since they’d left the clearing. And when it released its rain a few moments later, it only seemed inevitable, given the way the day and night had gone so far. In Wales, cloud cover in March was more normal than not. Cade told himself he was imagining trouble where there wasn’t any, or at least not in the weather. Nobody else gave the rain any notice, other than to pull up the hoods on their wool cloaks.
“I can’t believe we’re heading back to Caer Dathyl,” Hywel said.
They turned onto the road and picked up the pace, able to move more quickly even though the road had become a slough and their boots were coated with mud.
“Hopefully, Siawn’s in charge now.” Rhiann skirted an enormous puddle by moving to the edge of the road where it met the grassy rim of the forest and Cade followed her example. “He left the cavern just before Arawn fell, and I’d like to know for sure what’s become of him.”
“And Teregad,” Hywel said.
“And Mabon,” said Rhun. “He has my knife.”
Goronwy snorted laughter. “As you left it in his throat, you can hardly blame him for not giving it back.”
“It was his knife initially,” Cade said. “Do you really want to keep something of his?”
“I suppose not,” Rhun said.
“Unless a weapon from the world of the sidhe is the only way to harm him, just as with Arawn,” Goronwy said.
Taliesin grunted assent and everyone turned to look at him. “I suspect that is true.” And then he elaborated further, “I find it likely.”
“How about a good punch to the nose?” Dafydd said. “He certainly deserves one.”
Even Taliesin laughed at that. “That I could not say. You’ll have to try it next time you see him.”
“Be that as it may,” Cade said, “Arianrhod told me that Mabon has been returned to her.”
“What?” Taliesin halted in the middle of the road, down which he’d continued to move boldly, ignoring the puddles, even though his cloak was now six inches deep in mud. “What did you say?” The rain dripped off the end of his pointy nose, which he directed at Cade.
Cade shrugged. “That’s all I know. The conversation was rather one-sided, and I didn’t dare ask what she meant by it.”
“My lord!” Ahead of them, Dafydd broke into a run. “Men call to one another ahead of us!”
Taliesin shot Cade another look—a despairing one—which was an expression Cade had never before seen on Taliesin’s face. The other companions ran after Dafydd, but Cade caught Taliesin’s arm before he could follow. “You fear the demons?”
“The demons?” Taliesin said. “Why would I fear them?”
“But—”
“It’s Mabon,” Taliesin said. “Arianrhod may have given you gifts, for which we can’t help but be grateful—and which I hope we won’t come to regret—but that Mabon is with his mother instead of banished to the Underworld with his father is the worst news possible.”
Another shout came from ahead of them as their friends disappeared into the woods to the west of the road.
“We must hurry.” Cade wished he could question Taliesin more, but they had no time. “We’ll talk later.”
“We have dragons everywhere we look, my friend.” Taliesin jogged beside Cade. “And I suspect that I’m not the only one who is having trouble with his sight.”
“You can’t mean Arianrhod?” Cade said. “Her plan worked out just as she intended, don’t you think?”
“I think she left a great deal to chance. I suspect that she would have found several possible outcomes acceptable,” Taliesin said.
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
“The gods are taking sides in our world. That can’t be good for any of us.” Taliesin reached out a hand to Cade and caught his arm. “I cannot see, and because the gift has deserted me, I cannot help you. I have lost my bearings.”
And though Cade had never understood Taliesin’s reliance on his sight, he could see the dread in his friend’s face. And share it.
Rhiann
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DAFYDD’S LONG STRIDES outpaced Rhiann’s smaller, quicker ones, but after his initial head start, she hadn’t fallen further behind. She wasn’t sure she was ready for another battle, but at least this time, she and Dafydd wouldn’t be defending helpless women and children on a lonely path all by themselves. They’d fight among the other men, in the thick of things with everyone else. On second thought, maybe that wasn’t better after all.
They’d run no more than a quarter-mile before shapes of men showed through the trees. Rhiann had feared that it might be hard to tell in the dark which side was theirs, but it took only an instant to make that determination: these men had Cade’s dragon banner waving above their heads and that was the only side she wanted to be on. Dozens of torches lit up the forest and the hillside ahead of them, even as the rain continued to pour down. Cade’s men had established their position to take advantage of their strengths. Unlike the demons, they had archers and a significant number of men on horseback.
Just in front of her, Dafydd skidded to a halt. “Wait!” He held out a hand to stop her headlong rush. “We have time. The demons aren’t upon them yet.”
Now that she’d stopped running, she saw that Dafydd was right. No arrows had yet been loosed. The shouts Dafydd had heard must have been the warning calls that the demons were coming, rather than cries of men in the midst of battle. They’d come upon the scene from the north, with Geraint’s forces taking up the hill to the east of their position and the demons marching through the valley to the west, their own torches sputtering and guttering in the falling rain, but still lighting up the night and showing their progress for all to see.
“Better for them to march in the dark so we couldn’t guess their numbers,” Dafydd said. “Did they think we would quake before them?”
“Mabon probably thought it, he’s that arrogant.” Rain plunked on Rhiann’s hood, and she brushed her wet hair from her face with her fingers. The humidity in the air pressed on her, heavy with the scent of moist earth and foliage. “I’m not sure these demons do any thinking on their own.”
“Geraint couldn’t have set this up better if he’d planned it.” Goronwy came to stand beside the other two. “He owns the high ground. The demons march along a narrow valley and will be within arrow range for two hundred yards before they reach Geraint’s position on the heights.”
“What I don’t understand is why the demons didn’t get here earlier,” Rhiann said. “It was after midnight when we entered Caer Dathyl and ages before we reached Arawn’s cavern.”
“We’re some ten miles from Caer Dathyl, give or take,” Dafydd said. “It’s far, but not so far that I wouldn’t have to agree with Rhiann.”
“They could have ransacked a village or two on the way,” Goronwy said. “That would have slowed them some and isn’t outside their capacity.”
“Remember what I said about time,” Taliesin said, as he and Cade caught up with the others. “It passes differently in the world of the sidhe than in this one.”
“Of course,” Cade said. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”
Rhiann moved closer to Cade, comforted by his presence. “You mean just like when we went into Caer Ddu, time passed differently when we were inside Caer Dathyl?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” said Taliesin.
“No wonder the moon never moved in the sky,” Cade said. “If you hadn’t woken me so forcefully, I would have thought myself dreaming still.”
Rhiann flashed back to the horrible feeling of Cade’s lifeless body beneath her hands. If that was what sleep was to him, she much preferred having him out and about in the middle of the night, even if it sometimes got him into trouble. Because he had no breath or heartbeat, it was as if he had been truly dead.
Two years before, Arianrhod, the goddess of time and fate, had appeared to Cade in the form of a beautiful woman. With no warning, no query or discussion on her part, she had changed him into a sidhe of a sort. He’d become a god among men, except that in exchange for power, she’d taken his breath and heartbeat, and maybe even his soul. Arianrhod was a triple goddess—manifesting at different times and circumstances as mother, maiden, or crone.
Cade had lamented to Rhiann more than once that her coming had made him only one thing: a demon. Rhiann had consoled him with the notion that every man feared the beast inside himself, but Cade had countered that in him it became tangible, and each time he released the power of the sidhe, it became harder for him to hide.
And it was only when he took a man’s life that he felt truly alive.
That was the part of him Rhiann didn’t know—didn’t ever want to know, though she’d seen it more than once. Yet if they were truly to be together, she would have to come to terms with it. Somehow.
“And then once we left the clearing and the clouds moved in, it was impossible to tell the time at all,” Hywel said.
“But surely it hasn’t been three days since we entered Caer Dathyl?” Dafydd said.
“No,” Taliesin said. “I believe the magic has worked in the opposite fashion this time. By my estimation, it’s been only three hours. We’ve many hours still until dawn.”
“Look!” Hywel pointed towards the southern ridge across from the one on which they were standing. “A rider comes!”
“That’s Bedwyr,” Rhiann said. “I can tell from his bulky shape.”
“Let’s go.” Cade grasped Rhiann’s hand and tugged her forward.
“He’s going to be surprised,” Rhun said.
To the companions’ amusement, they arrived at Geraint’s command post simultaneously with Bedwyr, who dismounted from his horse in front of the pickets.
“What took you so long?” Cade said.
“How—” Bedwyr’s mouth opened in astonishment, but then snapped shut. “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”
“It’s a long story and worth the hearing.” Goronwy clapped Bedwyr on the back in greeting. “Glad to see you made it too and in one piece.”
“I take it by the fact that you stand in front of me that all went well inside Caer Dathyl?” Bedwyr said. “Did you find Arawn?”
“We did,” Dafydd said.
“Suffice to say, Teregad has been deposed, Arawn banished to the Underworld where he belongs, and the black cauldron closed,” Cade said. “For now.”
“There’s more, but first, we’ve some demons to kill,” Rhun said.
“Right.” Bedwyr blinked. “Glad that’s straightened out.”
Geraint and Tudur hurried over.
“My lords! You’ve come just in time.” Geraint’s eyes scanned the companions, and Rhiann could see him counting them to make sure none were missing. His brows furrowed as he got to eight and realized they were one short, but he didn’t ask about Siawn. “I trust everyone is well?”
“Very well,” Cade said. “What’s our situation?”
Geraint nodded at Tudur, who stepped forward to speak. “We’ve archers arrayed in a half-circle at the crest of the hill. They’ll do their work first, and we’ll see how many demons they can bring down. After that, it will be hand-to-hand, I’m afraid. We don’t have enough arrows to take care of all of them.”
“We brought you a few more,” Dafydd said.
Rhiann glanced at the quiver he wore and the bow in his hand, noting them for the first time. “Where did—”
“It was to hand when I awoke.” Dafydd shrugged. “I put it on. Your quiver also has more arrows in it than it did, you know.”
Rhiann had been so occupied with Cade that she hadn’t noticed that either. Shameful, really, because the first obligation of a warrior was to his weapons. Or hers.
Hywel moved to stand beside Dafydd. “I’ve arrows as well.” He held up a bow and twisted to show the quiver on his back. “It seemed petty to question the gift.”
“I know what you mean,” Cade said. “Not that any of us would have benefitted from turning the goddess down.”
“It’s time to move, Cade,” Rhun said.
“Right. You three go with Taliesin.” Cade stabbed a finger at Dafydd, Rhiann, and Hywel. “And no putting yourselves at undue risk! It would be a shame to have survived Caer Dathyl only to fall to an errant demon axe.”
“We’ll protect her,” Hywel said, taking Cade’s words for what he really meant. Dafydd nodded vigorously beside him.
“Just as likely to be the other way around.” Taliesin turned on one heel. “But no matter. Young ones, with me.” He set off along the top of the bowl on which they were perched.
Cade called after Rhiann, imitating Bedwyr’s growl. “Rhiann—”
“I know. I know.” She flapped a hand at him over her shoulder. “I’ll be careful.”
“You’d better, cariad!”
Rhiann waved again and then focused on the task at hand. She walked steadily behind the others until Taliesin came to a halt by a group of archers from Aberffraw. They stood in a row, gazing west towards the relentlessly advancing lines of demons. Rhiann read fear in the set of their shoulders—and perhaps a bit of misery, given the weather conditions. Nobody had yet strung a bow, as the rain would harm the bowstrings. But that meant nobody was really ready for this fight either.
“Lady Rhiannon!” It was Llywelyn, the captain of the Aberffraw garrison. “You’re safe and whole!”
“Quite safe,” Rhiann said. “I expect you to let me know if my draw isn’t as precise as you expect.”
“Always, my lady,” Llywelyn said, to general laughter.
The tension she’d felt in the men on the ridge eased for a moment. Then it ratcheted up again as Dafydd, Hywel, Taliesin, and she took their places alongside them—not because of them, but because the demons were approaching arrow range, though they still had a little time.
Taliesin had positioned the four of them on the left flank, so they’d be among the first to shoot at the demons. Hopefully, the archers on the other side of the valley, some three hundred yards away, would do the same, and together they’d catch the demons in a pincer movement.
“We’re going to be all right, Rhiann,” Dafydd said. “These demons aren’t so tough. We’ve fought them before.”
Rhiann choked on a laugh. In truth, the demons were tougher than humans, as Dafydd knew well. But maybe not as smart. That had to help.
“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” Hywel said.
Rhiann wrinkled her nose at his irreverent tone. The worst thing that could happen was that when the arrows started flying, the demons would charge at them, thinking to break through their lines, rather than flee the other way. If that happened, if the foot soldiers who stood on the slopes below them couldn’t stop them, the archers would be unable to defend themselves adequately. More lightly armed than the rest of the army, they might all die. At least as full-fledged knights, Hywel and Dafydd had swords at their waists. Rhiann had only a knife.
“We planted stakes twenty yards ahead, on the uphill slope,” Llywelyn said, reading her thoughts. “If they try to get through them, the stakes will give us time to regroup.”
“Or run away,” Hywel said. “That means you, Lady Rhiannon.”
“At the very least, the stakes will slow the demons down,” Dafydd said.
“How did you know the demons were coming?” Rhiann said. “King Cadwaladr sent Bedwyr to warn you of their numbers, but he arrived when we did.”
The little light at the end of Taliesin’s staff gave off enough illumination to reveal Llywelyn’s offended expression. “Scouts, of course. We’ve been ready for over an hour.”
“And what is the hour?” Hywel said.
Taliesin glanced at him and nodded his approval at the question. All of them had wanted to know the answer to that since they’d woken in the clearing.
“Four hours after midnight, I reckon,” Llywelyn said. “Less than three until the sun rises.”
“Dawn will not save us from the demons this time,” Taliesin said. “It will be over by then, come what may.”
Now that the demons were closer, the archers settled into whatever stance they found most comfortable. Their joviality and humor, which had been false to begin with, was gone. The leafless branches above their heads continued to drip onto their heads in an offbeat rhythm which Rhiann couldn’t help counting out in time to the marching of the demons.
Dafydd slipped a knife from his belt. Like the sword at his waist, the join between the blade and the hilt formed a cross, and he kissed it. Hywel, for his part, pulled his sword from its sheath, stabbed it into the ground in front of him, and knelt. Rhiann didn’t copy them, but said her own prayer, perhaps a mirror of Hywel’s: Dear God, keep me safe. Let all those here return to their homes in one piece, both in body and mind.
Rhiann closed her eyes. As she’d been trained by the captain and friend who taught her to shoot, long ago at Aberffraw, she forced herself to stuff all emotion into a box in her mind and put it away, as if placing it on a shelf out of reach. Cade had told her that some men fought angry and it gave them power. For her, it was better to feel nothing—no anger, hatred, love—for it would distract her from the task at hand, and she couldn’t afford that. For now, there is no love for Cade; no fear for my friends; no regret for a life half-lived. There is only the bow in my hand and the arrows in my quiver, with death a widening abyss beneath our feet.
Cade
––––––––
“THE TRUTH NOW,” CADE said, once Rhiann and the others had disappeared up the trail. “What do we face?”
“Two thousand demons,” Geraint said.
“That’s my count too,” Bedwyr said. “I caught up to them an hour out of Caer Dathyl. It was lucky that I had a horse to ride because I could never have kept up with them on foot.”
Cade looked beyond his companions to the oncoming march of the opposing force. He might be a sidhe—changed by Arianrhod into a creature out of legend—but these demons were no legend. He’d fought them for two years on his own and recently with friends, and he knew their strength. Arawn and Mabon would have had confidence that such an army could overpower twice that number of men, and Cade had a paltry eight hundred foot soldiers at his disposal. Cade gritted his teeth. He was just going to have to prove Arawn wrong. Again.
“The archers are well situated,” Geraint said. “Each have a dozen arrows to hand. I have confidence they can bring down a great number of the beasts.”
“From what I could see,” Bedwyr said, “the demons are not well armored.”
“It’s too bad we couldn’t have delayed them somehow,” Tudur said. “The dawn is too far off to count on its aid.”
“The dawn might slow them down some, but not as much as it will me,” Cade said. “Besides, it’s raining. There won’t be a sun today. The clouds will protect everyone.”
“Right.” Rhun rubbed his hands together. “Archers around the sides, foot soldiers to the front as the demons come on, and cavalry to flank them. It’s the old way, but the best way.”
“One thing they haven’t done is send out scouts,” Geraint said. “I don’t understand it. It’s almost as if they knew exactly where we’d be.”
“They were being aided by Arawn and who knows how many other gods,” Cade said. “Arawn may have been banished to the Underworld, but that doesn’t mean he’s impotent—that doesn’t mean we still can’t lose everything.”
“Or, if Arawn is otherwise occupied, we have Mabon to deal with again,” Goronwy said. “He isn’t in the Underworld with his father, right? Arianrhod was quite clear on that?”
Cade gave Goronwy a curt nod. His stomach roiled at the thought of what Mabon had done and could still do, loose in the world. Arawn hadn’t been able to control him, so Cade didn’t have much hope that Arianrhod could either.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rhun said. “Whoever it is, whomever we face, we have no more time.”
The companions’ horses had come to Arfon with Geraint. Cade was glad to see Cadfan again. The stallion whickered as Cade rubbed his nose. As one, the companions mounted and led the other horsed knights and men-at-arms away from the camp, circling into the trees to the north of the valley through which the demons marched. When the archers had expended their arrows and the foot soldiers had drawn the demons fully into the valley, Cade would lead his cavalry to slam the door behind them.
As they waited for that first flight of arrows, a hush descended on the human watchers, broken only by the muffled march of the demons’ feet. Cade had one hundred and fifty men on horseback. How could that be enough? They’d survive only if the archers were able to reduce the numbers of their opponents—and Cade’s men were able to catch them unawares.
“Half.” Goronwy leaned in to speak to Cade. “If the archers can reduce their numbers by half, that will make us nearly even.”
Cade nodded, although he wasn’t going to hope for such a positive outcome. Still, the demons had strength but no brains. Maybe that too could tip the balance in their favor.
Then the archers released the first rush of arrows, their passage sounding as much like a flight of birds as wooden shafts, except for the moment they hit. Demons didn’t scream their pain. Cade wasn’t sure they felt pain, but they felt something and the calls among them were guttural and wrenched the ear.
Goronwy stood in his stirrups, straining his eyes to see through the water-logged air. “What can you see, my lord? My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”
Cade didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t like the idea that any of his companions were growing older with increasing frailties. Not that Goronwy would be frail for a long time, but it highlighted the fact that they didn’t yet know if Cade would age alongside Rhiann. Perhaps that was the next gift Arianrhod could give him.
“Second flight ... third flight ... fourth flight ...” Cade counted them out as the shafts flew past them. “The arrows are finding targets. They’re hitting and demons are going down, but they’re not turning. They haven’t lost enough of their numbers yet.”
“That’s a side effect of not having a coherent thought,” Rhun said. “They don’t know when to run because they lack a sense of self-preservation.”
“I hoped for a while that returning Arawn to the Underworld would affect them,” Cade said, “that they’d lose their motivation to fight.”
“I guess not,” Goronwy said.
The demons continued to march up the valley, pushing through the flights of arrows and climbing over the fallen bodies of their companions. At one point, Cade thought he heard Rhiann’s cry aim for the neck or heart! over the rush of battle. He hoped he’d heard it, anyway.
He peered through the darkness, trying to make out what was happening. “They’re getting closer now. It’s almost time.” Fewer arrows barraged the demons now, but still they came on.
“The archers don’t have enough arrows.” Rhun urged his horse to the edge of the trees. “The demons’ numbers are too great, and the arrows they have left they’ll need to save for the end.”
“I know.” Cade met Goronwy’s eyes, and then Rhun’s.
Rhun nodded and straightened in his seat. What more was there to say?
Cade unsheathed his sword. He’d waited until this moment because as he raised it above his head, Caledfwlch blazed into a column of light. The air glittered around it, and the light shot into the trees above their heads, reflected off the raindrops, the branches, the burgeoning leaves, the water in the air, and onto the men. Even the demons couldn’t fail to notice.
Cade stood in his stirrups. “We ride!”
The knights and men-at-arms burst from the trees and rode down the slope in a rush, death a roar on their lips. They came out ten yards from the rear of the demon force and catapulted into it.
One demon after another fell before Cade. It took only a few heartbeats, which neither the demons nor Cade had, of course, for the demons to realize that they faced a greater enemy from behind them than from the front. Rhun kept to Cade’s left and Goronwy to his right, each chopping and hacking with him.
“By the Saints, they stink!” That was Rhun.
Cade glanced at him, noting the greenish liquid coating him and his shield, even as the rain washed it from his face. None of the blood was red. None of it was his.
Glad for Rhun’s dark humor, Cade returned his attention to the creatures in front of him. Horned, furred, bear-like, antlered, from brown to green, even some who looked more human than not. Cade met each one’s eyes as they fought, looking for some sign of humanity—some notion of what they were doing beyond mindless killing. He didn’t see it and Cade should have known better than to think that he ever would. Cade himself wanted to hold onto his own humanity as long as possible, but as he hacked and slashed at his foes, he admitted, yet again, that he would do better as a sidhe, that it was sheer stubbornness that kept him from releasing the demon that lived inside him.
Still, he hesitated.
Cade blocked the axe of a demon who was trying to behead Goronwy. His friend had been a hair’s-breadth from going down because of the creature, and Cade cursed himself for his stupidity. What was pride when his men’s lives were in danger? He needed that sidhe within him. It was why Arianrhod had changed him in the first place—not because he was evil like the demons, but because she knew that in order to defeat them, he needed the strength that the world of the sidhe gave him.
In the time it took to lift his sword and let it fall, he released his power. It flooded him as if he were standing under a waterfall in full spate, or drawing a deep breath after swimming underwater for too long. Except Cade hadn’t drawn breath in two years.
Goronwy spoke from beside Cade. “Mary, Mother of God!”
“What?” Cade plunged his sword into the mass of demons again while half-listening for Goronwy’s response.
“You—” Goronwy said.
“Leave it,” said Bedwyr from beyond them. “It doesn’t matter.”
The friends fought on, cutting a swath through the demon line. After the first rush of battle, Cade had led his men up the valley, heading around the perimeter of the demon force before turning into the central mass of bodies. He’d tried to cut off the bulk of the demons from the foot soldiers, hoping to alleviate the pressure on them and divide the demon force. In that, they’d been successful, to the point that some of the demons at the western end of the valley had finally turned to run away.
At the same time, a few had gathered on the far side of the field for a counter-attack. Once he saw the danger, Cade called to his men. “To me! To me!”
A dozen formed up and charged with him. Again, Cade’s arm rose and fell in a deadly monotony until he came out the other side and turned Cadfan, looking to renew the fight. Bedwyr pulled up in front of him, however, blocking his path back, and the red cleared from Cade’s vision.
“You’ve done enough, my lord,” Bedwyr said. “By the grace of the gods and your power, the demons are almost done.”
With that, Cade came completely to himself. Bedwyr was right. Cade pointed with his sword towards the demons who’d begun to flee, and Goronwy understood without him speaking.
“I’ll take them, my lord.” Goronwy stood in his stirrups and raised his voice. “After them!”
“Go with him, Bedwyr,” Cade said. “I’ll clean up here.” His friends spurred their horses away, leaving only Rhun beside him.
Cade let them go in favor of killing a few more demons. He urged his horse back across the field. But as he and Rhun rode forward, the remaining demons scrambled to get out of their way, tripping over each other in their haste and desperation. It was as if Cade had dropped boiling oil on an anthill. The demons streamed away in all directions, too quickly for Cade or Rhun to keep up, even on horseback—not with the piles of dead surrounding them on every side.
His shoulders sagging in relief, Cade pulled up in the center of the field and turned again to Rhun. “Do you know what Goronwy was talking about earlier?”
Rhun rested his sword in his shoulder and a smile hovered around his lips. “I couldn’t say.”
That clearly wasn’t the whole truth. “It isn’t as if Goronwy hasn’t seen me fight before—he’s seen what I become. You all have.”
Now, Rhun laughed, and it was an incongruous sound given the rain and the battle. He lifted his sword and gestured to the fleeing demons with it. “This time, even I have to admit that you look different. You can’t tell yourself?”
“Tell what—?” Cade said and then stopped, finally taking a good look at himself and seeing what everyone else couldn’t help but notice. In the past, when he’d allowed the power to flow through him, he’d looked different from his normal self, he knew. His eyes shimmered green, and he emitted an aura that was just short of tangible—at least according to Rhiann. Now, however, he glowed with a white light. He glanced at Rhun. “How—”
Rhun shrugged. “Arianrhod’s doing, I imagine. I’m sure Taliesin will have something compelling to say about it. For now, it seems you’ve driven the demons mad.”
And it was true. The demons who remained were running in circles, falling either upon their own blades or that of Cade’s men, whom they’d ceased trying to avoid or even fight. Watching them, Cade held the door to his power open even farther. It flooded through him. He was light itself, fire itself, and like Caledfwlch, shot sparks and diamonds in every direction.
Rhun gave him a long look and then urged his horse towards their own lines. Once Cade was sure no demon remained alive within two hundred yards, he followed. Although he couldn’t help those who’d already died, of which there would be far too many, Caledfwlch could heal the injured.
Next would come the part of battle that men usually didn’t talk about. After a fight, it wasn’t horror or fear or revulsion that a man felt, but utter joy at having survived another day: I am alive! And my enemy is not! Against all odds, I will live to see another sunrise! At the same time, he couldn’t help but acknowledge that he’d known from the start that the fight was going to go his way. It always had. He believed it always would. That probably wasn’t something he should share with Rhiann. Cade almost guffawed along with Rhun, mocking himself for his pretensions to grandeur.
This post-battle optimistic and joyful feeling was generally followed, in Cade’s case, by chills—purely emotional now, for his physical body no longer reflected what went on inside his mind. In the past too, the final stage was exhaustion. Even though he no longer felt it, it was important to remember that his men did and make allowances. Cade lifted his eyes to the heavens. The fat drops of rain hadn’t let up for a single heartbeat during the battle. Now, they washed the grime from his face, a loathsome mix of mud and demon blood.
And that was when he saw it. At first the demon didn’t register as a demon: it was a boar, and far bigger than any he’d seen in all the years of hunting and stalking the woods at night. It was far larger than the hounds they’d defeated outside the walls of Caer Dathyl. The boar’s red eyes glowed as they stared at each other—and then the creature coiled itself like a cat and leapt at Cade.
His first thought was: boars don’t leap!
Cade brought up his shield to block the attack, but the boar had moved so quickly, even Cade’s reflexes couldn’t deflect him. He barreled into Cade and brought him off Cadfan. It was a move Cade had used many times himself because it was an effective means of disabling an opponent. Cade shouldn’t have been surprised. Just last night, Dafydd had brought down one of the humans at Caer Dathyl with the same technique. It was just the timing, force, and speed that he’d failed to predict.
Cade fell to the ground, the boar on top of him. If Cade had breath, it would have been knocked from him. As it was, the back of his head snapped into the ground, and with a tangible whoosh, the power that had fed him over the last half hour sucked back into his center as if a whirlpool had replaced the flame. The boar’s front hooves rested on Cade’s chest, and it brought its snout and horns to within inches of Cade’s flesh. Cade stared at the demon and tried to gather his wits. “Who are you?”
The boar grunted, but then spoke as no boar could. “Silence! Do not bother me with trivialities.”
“My men—”
The beast barked what could only have been a laugh. “Only you can see me.”
“But—”
The boar snarled again. “I have a message for you. You may have spoiled Mabon’s plans. You may have closed the black cauldron, but he is still among us. Mabon walks the earth, and I with him. I will always be here. Give me what I seek, and I may let your friends live.”
“What is it you seek?” Cade spoke clearly now that he didn’t have to force the words through a constricted throat. He understood that the boar wouldn’t kill him, and perhaps didn’t have the power to kill him.
“Someone will come,” the boar said. “Be ready.”
Then he vanished.
Cade tried to lift his head to rise, but his body wouldn’t respond. He lay back, confused and exhausted.
“My lord!” Rhun’s uncharacteristic use of his title scared Cade almost more than the boar had, and then his brother’s concerned face appeared above him. He leaned down from the saddle, his face a mask of worry.
Cade blinked again, and the battlefield came into focus. All was as he’d left it. “Did you see it?”
Rhun dismounted and fell to his knees beside Cade. “See what? Are you all right?” He patted Cade down, looking for wounds.
Cade brushed his hands away. “I’m fine. But I’ve had another visit from the sidhe.”
Rhiann
––––––––
“CADE!”
Rhiann screamed his name. She hadn’t seen what had knocked him off his horse, but there was no mistaking the moment he fell from Cadfan and his power collapsed. When he’d first released the sidhe within himself, white light had flashed throughout the field. It had blinded Rhiann and, because of it, she’d released an arrow accidently and wasted it. It had sailed off over the trees to the south. She hoped that if it hit anyone, it was a fleeing demon. After that, Cade had shone like a beacon on a rocky point, guiding his people to him and scattering their enemies before him.
She’d stood beside her friends, pressing and loosing arrow after arrow. The demons had never reached the stakes that Llywelyn had ordered set, and when she’d released her last arrow and stepped back, she’d found herself calmer than she ever would have expected during a battle. Even along the trail by Llanllugan, it hadn’t been fear of dying that had overwhelmed her but fear of failure: that she and Dafydd might not be able to protect all the women and children who depended on them, and only them, for their survival. That had been a test unlike any she’d ever experienced. This had been target practice by comparison.
She’d made her arrows count and had killed over a dozen demons by herself. Combined with her friends, they’d killed a hundred, and among the full complement of archers in both companies, they’d killed nearly a thousand before running out of arrows. It hadn’t been enough to turn the tide, but it had winnowed them more than a little. Enough to give Cade the opportunity he’d needed.
Now, she gazed towards the center of the battlefield, peering through the pre-dawn murk for sign of Cade, who must have killed a hundred demons all by himself. She’d kept watch on his form out of the corner of her eye as she’d fired the last of her arrows.
“Wait—I see him,” Dafydd said. “He’s all right. Rhun’s with him.”
“What could have happened? One instant he was fine and then he was on the ground. Nobody came close to him. Perhaps he’s ill. Could it have been something Arianrhod did to him?” She strained to stop her voice from going high in her anxiety.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Hywel said.
Rhiann didn’t intend to wait. She ran for the path that led down from the ridge. With the demons scattered and no arrows left in her quiver, she couldn’t do any more good here anyway. Once she made sure Cade was really all right, she would help the wounded. Hopefully, with Cade’s healing sword, they could save many who might otherwise have died.
She hadn’t taken more than ten steps, however, before Taliesin appeared in front of her, blocking her way. He stood unmoving and unseeing. Although her heart told her to hurry and she was worried about Cade, she didn’t go around him. Instead, she pulled up short and touched his arm. “Taliesin?”
He blinked and focused on her face. “I must go.”
“What?”
As she gazed into the depths of his eyes, a pool of sorrow welled up inside her—whether for him, from him, because of what she saw there, she didn’t know. She had never seen such a look of sorrow in another person’s face, not even in that of Alcfrith, Cade’s mother.
“Tell King Cadwaladr that I will meet him at Deganwy Castle for your wedding, but I have business to the east,” he said.
“Wedding—what? Taliesin!” Rhiann reached for his arm, but he’d already melted into the woods. She gazed after him, uncertain whether or not to follow him. He obviously didn’t want her near him or he would have asked her to come with him, but would Cade want him to go off on his own, especially with stray demons loose in the woods?
Dafydd had been conferring with Tudur and now hurried over. “What was that about? Where’s Taliesin?”
“Gone,” she said, still stunned by his sudden departure. “He said he’d meet us at Deganwy.”
“What are you talking about? When?”
“I-I-I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know any of that. He’s just gone.” She didn’t want to tell Dafydd that Taliesin said he would meet Cade at their wedding, not without talking to Cade first. I need to see him!
Rhiann fled down the hill, running hard towards the spot where Cade had fallen. She leapt over the bodies of men and demons, ignoring everything but the bulky shadow of Cadfan who stood where Cade had left him, his head up and his ears pricked forward.
“Rhiannon, he’s fi—!” Rhun tried to stop her headlong rush but she barreled past him.
Rhiann fell to her knees beside Cade who lay just as he had that morning, for all intents and purposes, dead. “Why is this happening again!” She put a hand on either side of Cade’s face and pressed her lips to his. She released him and to her relief, he opened his eyes.
“It is as Rhun said.” Cade brought up his hands and grasped each of hers.
“Sorry.” Rhiann glanced at Rhun.
Rhun shrugged. “I thought he had perished too, at first.”
“What happened?” Rhiann glared at Rhun. “I thought you were supposed to protect him!”
“Rhiann, please.” Cade ran a hand over his eyes. “My limbs feel heavy still.”
Rhun held a hand out to Cade. “Let me help you up.”
Cade grasped his hand and pulled to a sitting position and then unsteadily to his feet.
Rhiann gazed up at him, unexpected tears tracking down her cheeks.
Cade looked down at her, and then put his hand under her chin. “Come here.”
Rhiann allowed him to pull her up too and fold her into his arms until she sighed and relaxed. “I’m sorry again, Rhun. I know how impossible it is to protect Cade when he doesn’t want protection.”
“I heard your love for him,” Rhun said. “But the truth is, I didn’t see anything amiss until Cade was on the ground.”
“Nobody but I did,” Cade said. “Nobody but I could. Rhun couldn’t have protected me in this case, even were he standing beside me.”
“Tell me,” Rhiann said.
“If you could pardon the wait, I’d like to tell the story only once. Taliesin must hear it too. Where is he?” Cade scanned the ridge above the field.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Rhiann said, “so I’m just going to say it—Taliesin’s gone. He said he had business to the east, and he would meet you at Deganwy for our wedding.”
Cade’s arms tightened around her. “I feared he’d leave us. I could see the compulsion in his eyes from the moment he confessed that he could no longer see, way back on the road to Bryn y Castell. That knowledge has haunted both of us every day since.” Cade barked a laugh that didn’t sound amused at all. “I guess we know where we’ll be getting married though, don’t we, cariad?”
Rhiann choked on a laugh that his cloak muffled. “I guess.” It wasn’t quite the proposal she’d imagined, but then, he was holding her as if he would never let her go and that was far more than enough.
“It was a demon in the shape of a boar,” Cade said, and then at Rhun’s exclamation of dismay added, “—a manifestation that only I could see and that could only affect me, or so it said and so it appears.”
“Not a regular demon, then,” Rhun said.
“No,” Cade said. “He told me that he wanted something from me and that he would send an emissary soon to ask for it.”
“Did he say what?” Rhiann said.
“Or who he was?” Rhun said.
“No.”
“Besides, who manifests as a boar?” Rhiann said. “I can’t think of any gods off the top of my head—.”
Cade made one of his forceful sighs. He loosened his arms around Rhiann enough to tuck her under his shoulder and then tipped his head back to look up at the clouds above him and let the rain pit-patter onto his face. “I can think of one, but it isn’t going to make anyone very happy.”
“Are you telling me that it was Mabon?” Rhiann said.
“No,” Cade said. “It wasn’t, which is precisely what concerns me. Taliesin said that the gods were taking sides in the world of the sidhe, and it meant that they would among us as well.”
“So who do you think it was?” Rhun said.
“The only god who manifests as a boar that I’ve heard of is Camulos, a god of war,” Cade said.
Rhun nodded, grudgingly. “That would make sense.”
“So Mabon has other allies now, besides Arawn,” Rhiann said. “That’s what you’re telling me?”
“It looks like it,” Cade said.
“Yet Mabon is with Arianrhod now,” Rhun said, “and she appears to think he’s on her side.”
Rhiann pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, trying to ease the stabbing ache that had formed behind her eyes. “If it really was Camulos who attacked you, it sounds to me as if Mabon is still playing the same game he was playing when he was with Arawn. He’s just enlisted some otherworldly help.”
Cade nodded. “Unfortunately for us, I think you’re right.”
“And if that’s the case,” Rhun said, “does Arianrhod have allies too? Or is it just you on whom she depends?”
Now Cade shook his head and gave a half-defeated shrug. “I don’t know. But if I’m all she’s got, this is hardly going to be a fair fight.”
Cade
––––––––
TO HAVE AN EMISSARY from Mabon approach him like this just when Taliesin took it upon himself to disappear was more than irksome. Just when I needed him. And then Cade chastised himself for that kind of thinking. As it was, it was likely that Taliesin was thinking of Cade: he’d seen what had happened to him, known something about it, and run off because the answers lay somewhere else. That Taliesin didn’t see anymore only made the need to leave that much greater.
“We’ve wounded, Cade,” Rhun said as they left the battlefield.
Cade shook off his dazedness and checked the sky. Very little time remained before sunrise—long enough to see to a few men who were too hurt to move to the trees. “Organize some stretchers. I’ll help here while I can.”
“Over here, Cade.” Rhiann had dismounted and begun moving among the fallen men and demons. There were plenty of both. The man she chose to succor first was a foot soldier who had a gash along his upper thigh. The wound was similar to many Cade had seen. Soldiers were taught to aim at an opponent’s neck or limbs because armor that was difficult to penetrate without forceful pressure protected the rest of the body. A slash wouldn’t do it. Head wounds too, were common.
Cade crouched and lifted the man’s hand to touch the hilt of Caledfwlch. “What’s your name?”
“Llelo, my lord. The demons—” The man broke off, seemingly unable to articulate further.
“They’re frightening, aren’t they?” Rhiann said. “Everyone’s frightened of them.”
“You have it right, my lady.” Llelo sighed and closed his eyes.
Cade watched the healing of the man’s wound. Another few heartbeats and it disappeared altogether without leaving even a slight scar. Cade snorted a laugh. A man might regret its total absence. It was well known that a strategically-placed scar might aid in courtship of a lady.
Cade pressed a hand to the man’s shoulder. “Wait a moment while you get your breath.”
The man opened his eyes and pushed himself onto his elbows. He stared at the smooth skin where before he’d been bleeding out. “Wait, you—”
Cade had saved the man’s life, but he turned away, not wanting to hear the man’s horrified protest. When it didn’t come, Rhiann spoke instead, “King Cadwaladr must seek the shelter of the trees now. If you could help bring the wounded to him, he might be able to save most of them. He hopes to aid them as he has aided you.”
“Of course, my lady! Anything!” Cade glanced back to see Llelo rub his leg one more time and then pop to his feet. “It’s a miracle!” Llelo held out his arms, twisting his hands back and forth as if he’d just discovered them, and then gazed past Rhiann to Cade. “Thank you, my lord!”
Cade gave him a small smile, more content with his so-called gift than perhaps he’d ever been before. He looked towards the trees at the top of the ridge. Rhun stood above him, waving a hand to get his attention. Cade lifted his own hand in acknowledgement and picked up his pace. His head had begun to pound. With the rain lessening in conjunction with the rising sun, he needed to get himself safe.
“Over here, Cade,” Rhun said.
While Cade had been working, so had others: collecting armaments, clearing the demons from the grass and tossing them onto an ever-growing pile, and preparing food and drink for the survivors, of which, Cade was glad to see, there were many. He’d feared, in the first moments of battle, that none at all would survive the onslaught.
“Do you need—” Rhun gestured towards a roped pig, one of many that the army had brought with them as food. The pig gazed placidly at Cade, unaware of its lack of a future.
Cade checked himself internally. “Not now. Not unless the cooks were going to butcher him anyway.”
Rhun peered at Cade curiously. “Are you sure? It’s been a long night, and it was an even longer day before that.”
Cade probed his insides, at that well of power that now lay quiescent. “I’m sure.”
* * * * *
MANY HOURS LATER, COVERED in blood but with a light heart, Cade gestured to Rhun to bring the last wounded man to him. As with all the others over the course of the long morning of labor, Cade reached for the man’s hand, intending to put it on Caledfwlch’s hilt.
But instead of acquiescing, the man tried to throw himself off the stretcher. “Stay away from me, demon!” His motion only succeeded in opening wider the wound that gaped in his belly. “I’ve been watching! I know what you are!”
Cade brought back his hand. “I’ve made no secret of it from the start. If you don’t want to live—”
“I’m sorry, my lord.” Tudur had his hands on the man’s shoulders, holding him down. “We thought he’d changed his mind.”
Cade sat back on his heels. This man should have been one of the first to come to him. As it was, Cade was glad he was the last. This was the response he’d expected from Llelo, but as each of the wounded had come to him and left healed and grateful, he’d put his trepidation from his mind. The man was correct that no gift from the world of the sidhe came without a price. But in this matter, it was Cade who paid it, not those he helped.
Rhiann stepped in and leaned over the wounded man. She put her hand to his forehead. “King Cadwaladr can help you.”
“Jesus save me!”
Cade got to his feet. “I’m not Jesus. I have no jurisdiction over your soul, but I could save your life if you’d let me.” The words came out more dry and emotionless than he expected. After a canter around his heart, Cade realized that detached was how he really felt. He could let this man die if that was what he wanted. He’d saved too many today to allow one man’s opinions to bring him low.
“No!” The man grew more agitated.
Rhiann tried again. “We know that death is not evil. But those demons weren’t of this world. You don’t need to die because of them.”
The man gargled at her, still protesting despite the blood filling his mouth, and fell back.
“Let him go.” Rhun stepped in to block the man from Cade’s view.
Cade tugged on the edge of Rhiann’s cloak to get her to look at him. “It’s all right.”
“No it isn’t!” Rhiann’s voice was full of anguish.
“If this is what he wants, I can’t argue with him,” Cade said. “I’m exactly what he thinks I am.”
“He has a wife and three children who might wish he’d made a different choice,” Rhun said.
“He’s so wrong about you.” Rhiann reached up and brushed back a strand of hair that had come lose from the tie at the base of Cade’s neck.
Cade clasped her hand. “Thank you. Until I met you, I feared that I was like those demons. You’ve helped me understand that I am not.”
“If he would just open his eyes, he would know it too.” Rhiann craned her neck to look around Rhun at the man, tears in her eyes at his pain and their impotence.
Her profession of staunch support reminded Cade of something he’d forgotten to set right. He pulled her to him. “Taliesin spoke of a wedding.”
“He did.” Rhiann’s bright eyes flashed at him.
“Out in the field I didn’t do the comment justice,” Cade said. “I haven’t asked you to marry me yet. We’ve never actually spoken of it.”
Rhiann waited, not giving him any help at all, just gazing at him with those bottomless brown eyes.
He brought his forehead down to hers. “Rhiannon ferch Cadfael, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
“Trust you to ask me on the edge of a battlefield. But at least it was a battle we won.”
“I can’t promise you anything but my love,” he said. “We might not have a roof over our heads tomorrow; we might not survive the war against the Saxons we know is coming. And then we might. You might even become Queen of Wales.”
Rhiann laughed at that. “Are you trying to get me to say no?”
“I’m giving you the truth.” He lowered his voice further. “I can’t even promise you children.” Those last words caught in his throat. He’d overheard Rhiann talking to Bronwen about how much she wanted children and what it might mean to her never to have them.
“I know.” Rhiann tightened her arms around his neck. “But I’ll marry you despite, and because of all that.”
Cade wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her until she ran out of breath.
Rhun spoke from behind Rhiann. “Doesn’t anyone do any work around here besides me?”
Cade reluctantly released Rhiann and smiled at his friend. “Rhiann has consented to become my wife.”
“That, alone, is an excellent outcome for the day.” Rhun rubbed his hands together. “She’s a much better choice than that last girl. Far more reliable.”
“What—?” Cade said.
Rhun laughed. “Arianrhod. Isn’t she the only other woman you’ve ever kissed? I just meant her.”
Cade smiled at his friend. That wasn’t quite the truth, as Rhun well knew, but Cade didn’t even remember that boy he’d been, who’d sought attention from maids and other lord’s daughters.
Rhiann threw up her hands. “I don’t even want to know.”
Cade tucked her arms back around his neck. “There will never be another woman for me but you.” He kissed her again.
* * * * *
WITH NO WOUNDED TO carry or care for and the dead buried, within the hour the army was ready to march again. But they would not travel all together this time either.
“I will head east,” Tudur said.
“To Porthmadog?” Cade said. It was the seat of Pod, king of Dunoding, who’d married Tudur’s sister. He’d been an ally of Cadfael, albeit not a very enthusiastic one.
“I will speak to him of the error of his ways,” Tudur said. “That he did not come to Aberffraw is permissible, in that he is not as young as he once was. But that he didn’t send any of his sons, and was thus unable to give you support when you needed it, is unacceptable. If I have any say in the matter, his men will be with you against the Saxons when the time comes.”
“Thank you.” Cade held out his hand to Tudur, who clasped it firmly. “Until then.”
“Send me word,” Tudur said. “I don’t relish battle any more than the next man, but to return home with only thirty dead and no wounded after facing an army twice our size is unprecedented. We will sing of this for generations.”
Geraint too declined the opportunity to see Caer Dathyl. “From what you’ve told me, I don’t relish a visit. Dafydd, here—” he clapped the young knight on the shoulder, “—can tell me all about it later. Our men will be wanting to see their families anyway. The sooner we start back north, the sooner we’ll be home.”
Cade allowed it, thinking that this was perhaps for the best, as it saved unnecessary explanations of what had gone on at the fort the night before. The men of Gwynedd who’d fought the demons would have enough far-fetched tales to tell that wouldn’t be believed, without the additional stories from Caer Dathyl.
“I, however, will come,” Bedwyr said. “I refuse to let you out of my sight again. The most strange and unprecedented things happen when I’m not among those who protect you.”
So it was a much reduced company that remained behind, waiting for the sun to set so Cade could travel south to Caer Dathyl. Cade sat on a log with his arm around Rhiann, who closed her eyes and leaned into him. He studied his friends one by one, their faces illumined by the light of the fire as the sun faded from the sky. The atmosphere was subdued, as was Cade himself, thinking what they’d each gone through with him and for him.
How could so much have happened in one night? What with the shipwreck, the events in Caer Dathyl, and the defeat of the demons, how are any of them still upright?
The thought brought Cade up short. And how is it that I feel as strong as ever, when I haven’t—he stopped, feeling a hollowness inside himself that he hadn’t known in over two years.
“Does anyone have anything to eat?” he said.
Hywel had been worrying at a hole in the dirt with a stick and now tossed it into the fire. Flames shot up, crackling anew. “I’ve some bread that isn’t too dry and an apple in my bag. Why?”
“I’m hungry,” Cade said.
“You’re what?” Rhun turned to Rhiann. “Did he say he was hungry? He doesn’t have a heartbeat, does he?”
Rhiann looked into Cade’s face, reached out a hand to put a palm to his cheek and then her head to his chest. “No. Are you feeling all right, Cade?”
Laughter tickled his throat, and he couldn’t contain it. The sheer joy of being hungry had his spirits soaring. “Can’t a man want a good meal every now and then?” Cade’s stomach growled loud enough for everyone to hear, punctuating his request.
Hywel got to his feet. “I’ll get what I have, my lord.” He walked to his horse, a grin a mile wide on his face.
“Every man but you!” Rhun said. “You ate more than any of us as a youth, when you used to eat.”
“I recollect your mother making a similar comment once, but she was speaking of you at the time, not me,” Cade said. “She said she had to feed you every two hours, just like an infant, or you’d get grumpy.”
Rhun laughed. “You can tell yourself that all you like, but it isn’t true.” He rummaged in his own pack and tossed an apple to Cade who caught it, rubbed it on his shirt, and took a bite. He closed his eyes as the tang of it hit him. Juice ran down his chin.
Rhiann was staring at him, wide-eyed. “You can taste it too, can’t you?”
Another wave of laughter bubbled up within Cade, filling him so that he almost choked on a piece of the apple. “I can. Is there more?”
“Here’s my contribution.” Hywel dropped an apple and a small loaf of bread into Cade’s lap.
“Why didn’t you eat when we did an hour ago?” Goronwy said.
“I wasn’t hungry then,” Cade said.
Soon, Cade had a small pile of food in front of him: dried meat, a bit of bread, a carrot Dafydd had been saving for his horse. Then it was gone and nobody had any more to offer him. Cade licked his fingers and wiped them on his breeches.
“I can’t believe I’ve agreed to marry such a barbarian,” Rhiann said.
“I can’t seem to help it.” Cade glanced up at his friends, each of whom gazed at him with expressions ranging from amusement to concern. “What has Arianrhod done to me?”
“Surely enough by now?” Rhiann said.
“We’d better get him to Caer Dathyl,” Rhun said, still enjoying the knowledge that Cade wanted to eat. “They’ll have more food for him. You’ll see that what I say is true.”
And so they did. Two hours later, with full dark cloaking their movements, they approached the fort. It appeared exactly as Cade thought it should—that is to say, small, plain, and with a wooden palisade rather than walls of black stone. Bedwyr and Rhun lit torches once they reached the pathway leading to the fort, so watchers on the ramparts spotted them—and Cade’s banner—from some distance away. Siawn himself came out to meet them, his horse flying down the pathway. A dozen retainers followed.
Siawn pulled up in front of Cade, dismounted, and bowed. “Sire. It is my honor to welcome you to Caer Dathyl.”
“Thank you, Siawn,” Cade said. “What a difference a day makes.”
“Is—are—” Siawn looked past Cade to the others clustered behind him. He swallowed whatever first question he’d thought to ask. “All is well?”
“The demons are destroyed,” Cade said.
Siawn’s expression cleared. “I am very pleased to hear it. I apologize for not being with you at the end.” Siawn’s face indicated he wanted to say something else—to ask more questions but thought better of it with so many witnesses.
“We missed you,” Cade said, “but understand that you had business to attend to at home.”
“Teregad has fled,” Siawn said. “He will never trouble us again.”
Cade nodded his acceptance while at the same time studying Siawn’s face. Siawn met Cade’s eyes, but still, Cade wasn’t sure if that was the whole truth, or if Siawn’s interpretation of fled meant that Teregad’s body had ended up in the Irish Sea. “You, then, are King of Caer Dathyl—if you will accept the challenge.”
“If it means that I still serve you,” Siawn said, “then yes.”
“With you on the throne here, I don’t have to worry about this region of Gwynedd and am content,” Cade said. “I will not pretend, however, that I won’t be calling upon you and your men in the near future.”
Siawn took a moment to reflect on that. “More demons?”
“Perhaps,” Cade said. “I wouldn’t bet against it, even with the black cauldron closed. I’m referring, however, to the Saxons. It isn’t as if we’ve yet dealt with the aftermath of Cadfael’s death. Cadfael had many Saxon allies, including Penda—my mother’s brother—and Peada, Penda’s son and my cousin, who not long ago planned to seal his alliance to Gwynedd by marrying Rhiann. They will find that I’m not quite as willing a pawn as Cadfael, for all that I can call Penda uncle.”
“We will be ready, my lord,” Siawn said. “For now, please accept the hospitality of Caer Dathyl.”
“Thank you,” Cade said, and then added, unable to contain his news. “Penda might also object to the fact that Rhiann has consented to become my wife.”
Siawn gave Cade his first genuine smile. “Congratulations, my lord.” He fell in beside Rhiann, a pace behind Cade as they finished their journey to Caer Dathyl.
“It looks so different,” Rhiann said. “I can hardly credit that so much could have changed in less than a day.”
“Remember that Mabon’s greatest power is that of illusion,” Cade said. “He turned Caer Dathyl’s wooden walls into black stone overnight and convinced everyone here that all was as it should be. That does not mean, however, that the walls were ever stone—only that we perceived them thus.”
“Taliesin said as much when he led us into Caer Ddu, though I didn’t understand what his words meant at the time,” Rhiann said.
“The gods belong to a different realm,” Cade said. “Even I don’t understand them, not even a little, for all that I carry a small part of the sidhe inside me.”
Dafydd spoke from behind them. “You mean—” He gestured broadly, which Cade interpreted as referring to Caer Dathyl, his companions, and the world in general, “—we can’t trust our senses at all anymore?”
Cade glanced back at him. “The gods put on a glamour that is impossible for humans to penetrate, myself and Taliesin included, though he might see more than he lets on.”
“Or did.” Rhun muttered the words under his breath.
“Camulos could have thrown a snowball at me, were it snowing, made the ball appear as a boar, and I would still have felt it hit my chest. I would have fallen over just as easily.”
“That would have been just like Mabon to trick you that way and amuse himself with the memory of it afterwards,” Rhiann said.
Similarly, back in Arawn’s cavern, Cade’s companions had seen doors that weren’t there, until demons came through them. Only Cade hadn’t been fooled. He had prided himself on his ability to stand as one of the sidhe when he needed to and see through their deceptions. The notion that in this case he hadn’t, or that Mabon had some new power over him, was disconcerting to say the least.
“What else have we witnessed that wasn’t real?” Dafydd said.
“The golden throne in Arawn’s cavern could have been a rickety wooden chair,” Goronwy said, “or the golden ship at Caer Ddu could have been a rowboat.”
“Do you think—” Now it was Rhiann’s turn to swallow her words. Cade looked at her, concerned, because her face had paled. “What about my father? Is he really dead?”
Cade swallowed hard himself at that thought. The body of Cadfael, which they’d been unable to remove from the wall at Caer Ddu, could have been nothing more than a rat, put there in Cadfael’s form for Mabon’s amusement. Admittedly, Teregad had been certain that Cadfael was dead and claimed to have had something to do with it. Cade decided to take that, of all the strange incidents leading up to this point, at face value.
“He’s dead, Rhiann,” Cade said. “It doesn’t pay to second guess ourselves too much. For all that Camulos was on that battlefield, or Arawn in his cavern—”
“—Or Arianrhod in the clearing,” Rhun said.
“They don’t bother with us most of the time,” Cade said.
He didn’t mention that were Taliesin with them, he might have said something to the effect that humans couldn’t be sure anything was real—whether or not a god bothered to play games with a man’s mind. How often did a man’s senses lie to him?
At night, he could turn a cloak on a hook into an intruder, a whisper through the shutters into a ghost, and a windstorm into an angry god. Cade pressed his hand to Caer Dathyl’s wooden gate as he passed through it, feeling the grains in the wood. If only he could ensure that he always saw so clearly.
Rhiann
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JUST AS WHEN SHE’D arrived at Aberffraw as a king’s friend, Rhiann was somewhat discomfited by her reception at Caer Dathyl. True, she was the only woman among the companions and was dressed in boys’ clothes, but the subservience of the occupants of the fort set her teeth on edge.
“It wasn’t very long ago that I was one of them,” she said to Cade that evening at dinner after yet another servant had bowed deeply as he poured her mead. And then some for Cade, who so far had consumed four entire trenchers of food and a gallon of drink. Rhiann had looked closely in his eyes several times. He was neither sated nor—more importantly—drunk.
“It isn’t just that you are my betrothed, cariad,” Cade said, taking another sip from his cup. “I believe Siawn has been talking.”
“About me?” Rhiann said. “What could he have said about me?”
“That you are a true heroine,” Cade said.
“Cade—”
“Eighteen hours ago, this hall was full of men who’d drunk from Mabon’s barrels and slept the night away. They’d lived among demons for heaven knows how long. This morning, they awoke to find Mabon gone and their fort back to the way it was a month ago. It was as if they’d gone on a drunken binge with only vague memories of their lives, even if the men we spoke to were coherent at the time.”
“I guess I can see that,” she said. “But I did no more than any of you.”
Cade canted his head at her and smiled, not responding to her assertion. Instead, he said, “That dress becomes you, by the way.”
Rhiann blushed, but then recovered to glare at Cade. “I’m not giving up my other clothes just because I’ll be the Queen of Gwynedd.”
“I haven’t asked you to, have I?”
“But you’ve thought it. I can see it in your eyes. Marriage isn’t going to give you an excuse to leave me behind at home, minding—” Rhiann caught herself before she let the children escape her lips. “—the fort,” she finished lamely.
She hoped Cade didn’t realize what she might have said.
Cade actually had the nerve to look sheepish. “Of course not.”
Rhiann poked his arm with one finger. “After all we’ve been through, you think you could get away with that?”
“The people will expect—”
“The people!” And then Rhiann couldn’t keep back her thoughts, much as she didn’t want to burden Cade with them. She leaned in until their foreheads were almost touching and lowered her voice. “They’ll expect a son within a year too, and that isn’t going to happen either.”
Cade licked his lips. “I know, Rhiann. I’m sorry. If I could be other than I am—”
Rhiann put a finger to his lips. “Don’t say any more. I couldn’t stop myself from speaking of it, but I won’t dwell on it, I promise. I love you—”
Rhiann didn’t get any more words out because Cade had clasped her hand in his, leaned in, and stopped her mouth with a kiss, to general applause from tables, high and low alike. He released her and she sat back, breathless as usual.
Cade brushed the back of her hand with his lips. “I don’t want to risk you ever again. I can’t promise that you will come with me to every battle or even the threat of one. But I will not banish you to the solar either. How about we take it one day at a time?”
Rhiann allowed him to study her and met his eyes once again. They were as clear and intent as always, blue and bottomless. “All right. One day at a time. Now...” She rubbed her hands together. “I have some questions for you.”
The blue eyes brightened. “Do you?”
“We’re engaged, soon to be married, and you owe me some answers.”
Cade rested his elbows on the table, obviously amused. “Anything, cariad.”
“First,” Rhiann said, “do you ever get tired?”
Cade blinked and then his mouth twitched as if he was about to laugh. He opened it to say something and then closed it again.
“What’s wrong?” Rhiann said. “I’m serious.”
“I know you’re serious,” Cade said. “I just don’t know how to answer. Do I get tired ... of what?”
“I mean your body—does it ever get tired? You slept in the clearing. Was that because you were sleepy tired, emotionally tired, physically tired, or none of the above.”
Cade barked a laugh. “Of all the things you could have asked me ...” He sat back in his chair, still laughing until Rhiann wasn’t sure he was actually going to give her an answer. Finally, he wiped at the corners of his eyes with the tips of his fingers and collected himself. “The short answer is, No, I don’t get tired. The longer answer is that when I slept, back there in the clearing, my mind truly rested for the first time in over two years. So, then yes, emotionally tired is the only tired I get. Anything else?”
“That first day at Aberffraw when we met, why didn’t you escape earlier? You could have killed everyone in the fort, particularly those two guards who brought you in. You didn’t need me at all.”
“Ah. In that you are potentially correct. I could have. But swords do hurt me and can kill me if a blade separates my head from my shoulders. So even if I’d killed the initial two guards, another—or seven—would have run me through before I’d taken two steps. At the time, I thought it better to wait. I intended to jump from my window. I would have if you hadn’t appeared.”
“You left it a bit late,” Rhiann said. “It would have been dawn soon.”
“In truth, I was lost in my thoughts. My mistake. In my defense, however, I was thinking of you.”
Rhiann ducked her head, foolishly pleased to have him say that. “So you did need me.”
“That’s what this is about? Whether or not I need you?” He leaned in and put a finger to Rhiann’s lips before she could reply. “Don’t answer that. Did I need you to help me escape? I might have managed it on my own without you, but it was far better and more easily accomplished with you. Do I need you in my life? Now, that is a different story. I admit that I could live as I have lived without you. But was that really living? And do I want to return to that kind of life? No.”
“Cade—”
“You are far more independent and resilient than I am,” Cade said. “You could live without me far more easily than I could live without you.”
“That’s not true—”
“Ah—” He hushed her. “Don’t deny it. You honor me with the knowledge that you don’t want to.”
“I love you,” Rhiann said.
“I know that too.”
* * * * *
THE FORT OF DEGANWY sat on and between two hills overlooking the eastern bank of the Conwy River. The great Maelgwyn Gwynedd made it his seat first, and the Kings of Gwynedd had maintained it ever since. Rhiann was glad that she and Cade would marry here instead of at Aberffraw. While Aberffraw was an ancient fort, built over the top of even older ruins, memories of her life there haunted her.
She and Cade had traveled to Aberffraw before, when Cade assumed the throne. They’d found the hall much improved from when her father had ruled it—but in her mind it would always be Cadfael’s, not Cade’s, and her childhood had not been a happy one. Perhaps Taliesin had understood that, although knowing him, he could have chosen Deganwy for their wedding for reasons that had nothing to do with her.
Rhiann had spent the day in a most unusual manner for her: with other women fussing over the fit of her wedding dress. Even she had to admit that it was beautiful: a dark green with white at the wrists and neck—and that she might look beautiful in it. Their wedding, however, would otherwise be unlike any she’d ever attended, and not just because the groom was the King of Gwynedd and a sidhe.
Usually weddings involved fathers and signed contracts, distribution of property and the arrangement of dowry. Rhiann came to Cade with nothing but her bow and the quiver on her back. His mother, Alcfrith, was the only mother she’d ever known, and she hadn’t been much of one at that. Usually, too, the guests invited to the wedding wanted to be there.
In this case, Cade was using their wedding as an opportunity to gather the Kings of Gwynedd and Powys to him, those that would come. Some hadn’t attended the ceremony at Aberffraw and would need to pay homage to him or risk his wrath. He was their liege lord, after all, even if the gods had touched him. Over the last three days, more than one lord’s eyes had shown trepidation as he entered the great hall and greeted his new king.
From the heights above the river and the Irish sea, which lay just to the north of the spit of land on which Deganwy Castle was built, Rhiann and Hywel watched another group of travelers peer up at the fort. The sun shone into Rhiann’s face, and she shielded her eyes against it. Then she smiled, recognizing the man at the head of the company. This time, as he’d promised, Tudur had brought his brother-in-law.
Rhiann waved down to him before checking Hywel’s profile beside her. “Have you spoken to Dafydd?”
Hywel glanced at her but otherwise continued to gaze studiously at the river below them and the men crossing it. “You should talk to him yourself.”
“I can’t,” she said. “We’ve been such good friends and I trust him completely, but—”
“It isn’t as if your wedding to King Cadwaladr is a surprise to him,” Hywel said.
“Her wedding is a surprise to someone?” Dafydd had mounted the stairs to the battlements without them noticing and now came to stand on the other side of Hywel. His words had been for Hywel and, although an outsider might note that they stood in close proximity, Dafydd hadn’t looked at Rhiann.
Well, this is awkward. In the long pause that followed, all three gazed over the ramparts at the influx of new guests. Finally, Hywel took a step back. “King Cadwaladr asked me to ... check on our supply of arrows. I’d best be off.” He turned on his heel and trotted down the stairs to the courtyard.
Rhiann watched him go, not knowing if she had the fortitude for this. She took in a breath and turned to Dafydd. “Can you forgive me?”
“You’ve done nothing that needs forgiveness, Rhiann,” Dafydd said, not pretending to misunderstand. “You loved the king long before you were my friend. I’ve cherished that friendship, but today is the last day I will call you by your given name.”
“Dafydd—” Rhiann touched his arm and then drew her hand back. From his expression, her sympathy would only make this worse.
“I’ve asked the king for an assignment away from here.” Dafydd gestured with one hand, indicating the castle, her, Gwynedd—maybe all of it. “He says that after the wedding, he will send me south, if I wish it. I will be his emissary to the rulers of Ceredigion.”
“Cade told me that he’d been thinking about what needs doing,” Rhiann said. “It’s a long way to travel, and maybe dangerous.”
“I need to go,” Dafydd said. “And the King needs allies. Despite what happened at Caer Dathyl, he isn’t as immediately concerned about Mabon and his plans as he is about the Saxons and theirs.”
“He can’t predict what Mabon will do,” Rhiann said. “He knows the Saxons are not our friends and never will be, even if they allied with his birth father and Cadfael after him.”
“The lords of Ceredigion have always focused their trade and ties in the direction of the western sea, towards our cousins in Ireland. They don’t fear the Saxons yet. The mountains protect them. But if we fall, or Powys falls, Ceredigion will be as exposed as we are now.”
“It is your task to explain that to them?”
Dafydd glanced at Rhiann. “You doubt that I can?”
“Of course not, Dafydd.” Rhiann had hurt him, and now he saw criticism in the most innocuous of comments. That hurt her, but his was a pain that wasn’t going to heal in a day, not even with the help of Caledfwlch—or especially not with the help of Caledfwlch. “You’re the son of a king. You lived for a year in the kitchens of Caer Dathyl to see what kind of man you were. You’ve held Dyrnwyn and lived. I was merely clarifying so I could fully understand.”
Some of the tension in Dafydd’s shoulders eased. “I have your blessing, then?”
“You are my friend, Dafydd, my staunch companion and a hero in your own right. I look forward to shooting with you again.”
“I wish you the best, Queen Rhiannon.” Dafydd bowed and left her.
As she watched him go, tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. Marrying Cade was what she wanted—what she needed—but she hadn’t wanted to hurt Dafydd along the way. She replayed something Alcfrith had said to her when she arrived, the joy shining through her but coming out as sorrow as well. You’ve taken the reins of your life in both hands and held on. No matter what happens, don’t let go.
Dafydd, too, had left his home and followed his own path. She had faith he’d make his way through this trial too.
Cade
––––––––
“YOU HAVE THE RING, right?” Cade said.
“Of course.” Rhun held up his left fist. “Right here.”
Cade couldn’t get his next words out because his throat had closed. He nodded instead.
“You’re not nervous, are you?” Goronwy said. “No second thoughts?”
“Have you lost your mind? That’s not it at all,” Cade said. “I didn’t want anything to go wrong and already it has because Taliesin isn’t here, though he sent word ahead—”
The entrance to Deganwy’s great hall flew open, cutting Cade’s sentence short. And it was Taliesin himself strolling across the threshold as if nothing were amiss. Rain poured outside, and he shed water from his cloak on all and sundry as he passed among the many guests, grinning a mischievous grin all the while. A path cleared before him and, with a nod to individual dignitaries, peasants, and warriors he singled out especially, he made his way to where Cade waited.
“I see I’m just in time,” Taliesin said.
“That you are,” Cade said. “I was afraid I was going to have to do this without you.”
“Not possible,” Taliesin said. “Even if Father Siawn might be adequate to the task, I couldn’t countenance such a thing. Where’s Rhiannon?”
“Coming,” Rhun said. “Bronwen and Alcfrith are getting her ready.”
“Excellent,” Taliesin said.
Cade observed his friend. He hadn’t really looked at him since Arawn’s cavern, when Arawn had broken Taliesin’s staff. Whether through Arianrhod’s magic or his own, Taliesin had held it again in the clearing and while they fought the demons in the field, and now carried it as he always had. Cade couldn’t even discern a crack where Arawn had split it. Taliesin’s shock of white-blonde hair was slightly more kempt than usual, and he appeared to have made some effort to clean himself for Cade’s big day. Instead of his usual tattered black cloak, he wore the green one Cade had acquired from the man he’d killed outside the entrance to Arawn’s cavern. Cade didn’t remember giving it to him.
“You’re in a good mood,” Cade said. “Why? I know it isn’t for my wedding.”
“I am very pleased for you and Rhiannon, of course,” Taliesin said. “But you’re right. I finally have conceived a stratagem that will put us back on the path to solving some of these problems that face us.”
“You have a plan to defeat the Saxons?” Cade said.
Taliesin flapped his hand in a dismissive gesture. “We’ll deal with them in due course—I have much to report that you will not yet have heard. No, my plan is how to get my sight back.”
Cade stared at Taliesin. “And that’s why you’re happy?”
“Yes,” Taliesin said. “It’s far better than not having a plan.”
“I thought you had it back,” Cade said. “After the demon presence attacked me on the battlefield, you told Rhiann that you would meet us here, at Deganwy, for the wedding, so...” Cade trailed off at Taliesin’s puzzled look.
“I didn’t need the sight to know that you were going to marry Rhiannon soon, nor to know that you’d choose Deganwy over Aberffraw for the event. Aberffraw has too many memories for either of you to be content marrying there. And now, the gods have smiled on us further. It’s raining, and rain is lucky for a wedding.”
“That’s because it always rains in Wales,” Goronwy said.
“No matter,” said Taliesin, still smiling happily. “Rain makes it easier for our lord, here, to travel.”
“There’s some place you want me to go—with you?” Cade said.
“You and I—and your lovely bride of course—mustn’t separate you two so soon—will ride to Dinas Bran. I need to complete a task there before the High Council meets.”
“You do have a plan.” Cade looked at Taliesin suspiciously, not trusting his uncharacteristic cheerfulness.
“Will it be dangerous?” Rhun said.
“Of course.” Taliesin’s brow furrowed. “Why would you even ask such a question?”
Cade smiled, despite his apprehensions. He’d missed Taliesin. Regardless of the reason, he was pleased to see his friend in such a mood. He was about to ask more questions when he sensed movement in the side doorway to the hall. Because it was raining, Alcfrith had scrapped the notion of having Rhiann arrive through the main door as Taliesin had.
At Rhiann’s entrance, the room silenced.
“Close your mouth, Hywel,” Goronwy said from beside Cade. “And don’t drool. It’s unbecoming in a knight.”
“She’s beautiful,” Hywel said.
Rhiann’s dress perfectly set off her deep brown hair that the other women had swept up from the base of her neck. She wore no jewelry. Her only adornment was a just-blossomed sprig she carried. Even Siawn hadn’t objected to their choice of the spring equinox as the date of their wedding. A rebirth for Wales, he’d said, as well as the Christ.
Rhiann moved towards Cade, her eyes fixed on his, and Cade had eyes only for her. He couldn’t begrudge Hywel his admiration, since Rhiann was his. She’d told him that it was wrong to think that he needed her above everything else, and he’d accepted that when she said it, not telling her the absolute truth—because what she’d said wasn’t true. He would gladly give up everything he valued if only she would stay with him. That she’d pledged to do exactly that brought him to his knees every time he thought about it. He loved her so completely he thought he would come apart at the joints sometimes with wanting her. He might be the King of Gwynedd, but she’d never valued his station. He might be sidhe, but she loved him despite his affliction.
She loved him—that part of him that was just Cade; that part of him that Arianrhod couldn’t touch—and it humbled him. It was pure and rare and was only matched by the love he felt for her. As she came towards him, he wanted to sweep her into his arms and kiss her until she ran out of breath. But it wasn’t quite time for that. He didn’t bother to hide the thoughts behind his eyes. The time was past for keeping secrets.
They clasped hands, and their friends who stood up with them made way for Taliesin and Siawn to come forth together, one on each side of Cade and Rhiann. In unison, the two priests—sometimes rivals, sometimes friends—raised their hands to the heavens and called down the blessing together. For all the world, it looked as if they’d practiced it, which Cade knew they hadn’t.
Then it was Cade’s turn, and he brought Rhiann to stand at the edge of the crowd of onlookers in the hall. Rhun handed him the ring, while Rhiann passed the sprig to Bronwen. Cade took Rhiann’s hand and recited by heart—and from his heart:
––––––––
There are three fountains
In the mountain of roses,
Each, I pledge to you.
One of love, to drink deeply together,
The second of desire, to trail our hands in its heated flow,
The third of fidelity, that quenches our thirst
When all other waters fail.
And before I set my eyes on the end of existence,
And before the broken foam shall come upon my lips,
And before I become connected to wooden boards,
May there be festivals to my soul,
With you beside me.
We are young; we are old.
In heaven, in earth, at the end,
In straits, in expanse, in form,
In body, in soul, in habit,
In the valleys and mountains, under the stars.
Thou art always, wife.
––––––––
RHIANN RESPONDED. “THOU art always, husband.”
His heart lighter than it had ever been, Cade slipped the ring on Rhiann’s finger and leaned down to kiss her. The room exploded with applause and laughter. Cade laughed himself and wrapped his arms around Rhiann. He looked over her shoulder at his friends, and then past them just in time to see two demons slither into the room from the same side passage Rhiann had used.
Heedless of the revelry, they snapped out their arms as if laying a tablecloth, and with a flash, cast the room into frozen silence.
Rhiann
––––––––
CADE’S GRIP ON RHIANN tightened.
“What’s happening?” Rhiann’s voice came out a whisper, muffled by Cade’s cloak.
“Hold still,” Cade said. “I’m going to need your help, and I don’t want them to know you aren’t unconscious.”
That didn’t sound good.
Carefully, as if she was a large doll, Cade carried Rhiann off the dais where they’d said their vows. She caught a glimpse of their friends, each frozen in a grotesquery of their usual selves, so she kept her legs stiff to keep up the façade that she was affected too. Cade forced her to bend at the waist and sat her on a bench near the dais, with her back against a table, conveniently located next to Hywel’s bow and quiver, which he’d taken off for the ceremony.
Since Llanllugan, she, Hywel, and Dafydd never went anywhere without their bows. Today, however, for the first time in a month, Rhiann herself wore no weapons at all, not even a knife strapped to her calf or at her waist. When she’d gone to buckle on her old belt and sheath over her gown, Alcfrith had laughed, pried it from her fingers, and taken it away. Her friends still had their swords, but everyone except she and Cade was frozen solid, and the only reason that she could think of that she wasn’t was because she’d been holding onto Cade.
Once Cade settled Rhiann, he straightened and stepped closer to the demons, half-blocking Rhiann from their view. Rhiann was sure he was standing in that position on purpose, but she scootched incrementally to the left so that she could see around him to the demon’s faces, even if she didn’t dare give the game away by looking at them head on and glaring like she wanted to.
They wore black cloaks and had tucked their hands inside their sleeves. Their faces were the only part of their bodies that weren’t completely covered, though they wore deep hoods. Each was a mirror image of the other, with pinched mouths, black and narrowed eyes, and deep lines carved into what passed for skin. Rough leather was more like. These demons weren’t projecting a glamour like Mabon did—perhaps that wasn’t part of their powers—and didn’t appear to be warriors, but they frightened Rhiann all the more because of it. They didn’t need to threaten with weapons. Their appearance was enough.
“What do you want?” Cade said.
“Such hostility.” Oil and the ice dripped from the demon’s voice and Rhiann shivered. Fortunately, the owner of the voice didn’t notice the movement. It probably hadn’t occurred to them that their spell hadn’t been universally effective.
“We are here because you have something our lord wants,” the second demon said.
Cade was focused entirely on the two demons, and Rhiann didn’t want to disturb him, even though she longed to leap to her feet and scream They’re dangerous! Don’t get any closer! She didn’t dare move at all, either to ask if Cade knew who they were or to scoop up Hywel’s bow and an arrow to fire it off in their direction. In truth, she didn’t really want to know their purpose. She just wanted them gone.
Despite her fear of being caught, tiny movement by tiny movement, she shifted to bring herself closer to Hywel’s weapons.
“How many of my people have you killed?” Cade said.
Like the other men, he’d come to the wedding armed—not because he feared that anything might go wrong, but because knights wore swords as a matter of course and as a symbol of their station. Now, Cade pulled Caledfwlch from its sheath and held it out, pointing it at the two demons. It shone as brightly as ever, reflecting the light of the torches, spitting it back out as when oil is thrown on a fire, and casting diamonds across the ceiling. Both demons blinked at the light, and one of them lifted a hand to shield his eyes.
“That was not our charge,” the first demon said.
His face took on a look as sinister as Rhiann could imagine, the features sharp and unnatural. A scream choked her throat, but she swallowed it down, refusing to give in to the fear. She needed to stay calm if she was to help Cade and her friends.
“However, Lord Mabon didn’t restrict us to mere conversation if the opportunity for amusement presented itself, and you were accommodating,” the demon continued. “I’m sure you, of all humankind, understand our needs.”
“Mabon,” Cade said.
“We’d appreciate the gift of one or two women, who won’t be missed,” the second demon said. He pulled his hood down further to leave his face in shadow.
Rhiann catalogued the women in the fort. Whether wife, companion, or servant, she knew them all. Alcfrith and Bronwen had stood up with her as she married Cade so were safe for now, if anyone was. Her chest tightened and a cold settled in her belly at what havoc these demons might have wreaked before they’d entered the hall. But not so much so that she couldn’t think. She began to unroll the bowstring that Hywel had wound around the tip of his bow.
“You have something our master requires,” the first demon said. “Where is it?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Cade said. “You’ll have to explain.”
Rhiann flicked her gaze to Cade and back down to the bow. His clipped intonation and the tension in his shoulders indicated an extreme anger he was struggling to control.
If it made sense that a demon could scoff, this one did. “We want the sword. Give it to us.”
“Do you mean this sword?” Cade raised Caledfwlch higher.
The demon took an involuntary step backwards.
“Never,” Cade said.
“Although you stole Caledfwlch from Caer Ddu, my master has said you can keep it.” The demon said these words as if Mabon had truly bestowed on Cade a favor. “It’s Dyrnwyn we want, the sword of the white hilt. You took it from Caer Dathyl when Arawn fell. Our lord has had word that you house it here, at Deganwy.”
“No,” Cade said.
All three paused. Cade stood with his sword still pointed at the demons while the two demons appeared to be struggling to find the right words to counter him. Rhiann was still trying encompass the demons’ request. Dyrnwyn? Here? Why would Mabon think Cade has it?
Rhiann clenched her teeth as she tried to affix the string to the bow without calling attention to herself. She shot a quick glance at her husband. The power within him was growing, although the demons appeared completely unaware of it.
Then Cade released his power.
Rhiann would tell herself in those between times that she was used to it—or as used to it as it was possible to become—but the truth was, she hadn’t ever gotten used to what happened to him.
It took less than a heartbeat for Cade to fill the room. This power was the same as he’d displayed on the battlefield. He became light. Rhiann swallowed hard and looked away. Cade took a step forward. He had himself in hand.
Now it was her turn.
The demon quailed before Cade, holding one hand out to keep him at bay. “It is as the prophecies foretold.”
That had Rhiann swallowing hard again.
Then the demon pointed at someone in the audience who Rhiann couldn’t see from where she sat. “Another step and that man loses his life.”
Cade froze. He glanced at Rhiann, just one flash of those iridescent eyes, before turning back to the demons. “Harm one of my people, and I will send you to a place from which you could never return.”
Rhiann couldn’t tell if the demon believed him. Then again, Rhiann didn’t know if she did either. If it were possible, however, she had no doubt Cade would do it.
“Let’s try this again,” the demon said. “No, I do not possess Dyrnwyn or no I don’t know where it is.”
“Just no,” Cade said. “Your threats are meaningless. Tell your master that he will get nothing from me.”
“Mabon predicted you’d say that but thought it worth the effort to ask.” The demon hesitated, his eyes flicking from Cade to the man he’d threatened.
“Don’t do it,” Cade said. “The consequences will be more severe than you can imagine.”
“I act only by my lord’s will,” the demon said. “Lord Mabon can kill any one of your people merely with the thought that it should happen. Only his hope that you would join forces with him has stayed his hand up until now.”
The demon’s words hung in the air. Neither they nor Cade moved and Rhiann tried to still her own breathing so it didn’t seem so much like it was echoing in the hall.
“You tell Mabon that the next time he wants to talk to me, he comes himself. I don’t negotiate with intermediaries, whether you or one of his allies in the world of the sidhe. I am tired of his games.”
“You dare threaten Mabon, son of Arawn?”
“I do not threaten,” Cade said.
Another pause. “So be it.” The demon surprised Rhiann by bowing stiffly. Then, with a jerk of his head to his companion, he swept his cloak around himself.
The other followed and said, “You would have done better to aid my master.”
Then with a snarl, both demons threw off their cloaks, revealing bared teeth and gleaming swords. The first demon released a high cackle. The sound raised the hair on the back of Rhiann’s neck as it filled the hall. “Perhaps we can make you reconsider our master’s offer!”
“Now, Rhiann,” Cade said.
Rhiann had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but since it had, she was ready. As she rose to her feet, she pulled two arrows from Hywel’s quiver and almost in the same motion ripped the fletching down one side of each arrow with her teeth. Then she pressed the arrows into the bow, one on each side of the bowstring.
Cade moved out of the way to give her a clear shot. “I am a sword, a staff, the tear of an arrow through the air.”
Rhiann loosed the missiles. They flashed across the hall, catching both demons unaware. One arrow hit the first demon straight in the chest, punching through his cloak with a sickening thud. The second arrow failed to penetrate as fully and hit the other demon in the right shoulder, injuring him, but not enough to kill him. The demon shrieked—whether in anger or pain, Rhiann didn’t know, since she still didn’t know if demons felt pain.
Cade had started moving the moment she released the arrows. He raised Caledfwlch high. By the time Cade had crossed half the distance to him in the blink of an eye, the second demon spun around to face him, his sword out and ready.
“Cade!”
Rhiann called her husband’s name, as if that single word might save him from an unexpected thrust. As it was, Cade severed the demon’s hand at the wrist in one blinding slash and then drove back the other way at the demon’s neck. The creature fell to the floor, headless.
With equal suddenness, the lights in the hall came up. The torches ceased to sputter in their sconces and the fire in the central hearth flamed yellow. A man groaned. Cade leaned down to clean Caledfwlch with the edge of one demon’s cloak and then slid the sword back into the sheath at his waist. He strode back towards Rhiann. The set of his shoulders and the narrowing of his eyes told her that his earlier anger was a small thing compared to what he was feeling now.
Cade spoke through clenched teeth, his jaw bulging with the effort of containing his emotions. “He seeks to strike at me in my own home? At our wedding? The one day that should have been sacred ...” He reached Rhiann, wrapped his arms around her shoulders, and pulled her to him. “You should not have had to do what you did. You should not have had to face them.”
Rhiann had begun to shake as the tension of the last half-hour left her, but his words settled her a bit. “We’ve agreed I’m not a delicate flower, Cade. You can count on me, just as much as you count on Rhun or Goronwy.”
“I know that,” he said. “And I did count on you. I just don’t want to have to.”
Cade
––––––––
HYWEL MOANED AND STAGGERED to the nearby table at which Rhiann had sat earlier, nearly falling twice before he reached it. He rested both hands on the flat surface, his head hanging. Then he scrubbed at his hair with one hand, still supporting his weight with the other. “I don’t feel so good.”
“That wouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.” Cade rested a hand on Hywel’s shoulder and squeezed once, before moving around him to catch his mother as she fell into a faint in his arms. He cradled Alcfrith like an infant and carried her to where Rhiann waited beside Hywel.
“It’s all right.” Rhiann smoothed the hair back from Alcfrith’s face.
“What happened?” Alcfrith opened her eyes and gazed blearily at Rhiann.
“Nothing Cade couldn’t handle,” Rhiann said.
She sat with one arm around Alcfrith and the other massaging the back of Hywel’s neck. Hywel held his head in his hands, having seated himself beside her, since his legs were too wobbly to support him. Still on the dais, Rhun stirred and swung his arm in a reflexive movement, knocking over a half-full goblet of wine which Siawn had used as part of the ceremony to bless the fruitfulness of their marriage. Cade pushed away the fruitlessness of that hope. Rhiann had promised not to dwell on it. It wouldn’t do for him to, either.
Even Taliesin, only now blinking his eyes, had not been immune to Mabon’s spell. To Cade’s mind, that was perhaps the most disturbing thing of all.
“I feel as if I’ve eaten something unclean.” Hywel managed to straighten his back, and then fell forward again, retching, his fingers clenching his hair as if pressing hard could contain his pain.
“You’re not far off,” Cade said. “We’ve been visited by Mabon—or least his emissaries. They wanted Dyrnwyn and thought to ask us for it.”
“Mabon thinks we have Dyrnwyn?” Rhun had collapsed on the edge of the dais with Bronwen in his arms, fortunately awake and blinking if not yet articulate. Cade and he shared a look, more of speculation than concern.
“I wonder why he would think we have it?” Taliesin said.
“I would have preferred it if you already knew,” Cade said.
“My gifts have deserted me.” Taliesin looked down at his feet, hiding his face from Cade’s scrutiny. It was a pose so unlike Taliesin that Cade stepped closer, thinking to speak. Taliesin glanced up again, and Cade read that same something in his face—something that looked to him like real fear—but then his expression smoothed and his eyes hid the thoughts behind them.
Cade nodded to show his acceptance—for now—of Taliesin’s privacy. He turned back to his mother, who’d recovered enough to sip at a glass of wine. Rhiann still held Alcfrith’s hand, but Cade’s exchange with Taliesin had caught her attention.
Rhiann’s gaze tracked from one to the other. “I thought—” she stopped.
“Leave it, cariad,” Cade said. “We’ll talk later.”
“You!”
Cade turned at the shout to see King Morgan of Powys and his son, Rhys, push their way towards the dais through the crowd of people, all of whom were in various stages of semi-consciousness. Morgan and Rhys had been the most outspoken opponents of Welsh unity at the council meeting Cade had attempted to hold before the wedding, even as they ardently promoted their own personal authority. This they maintained despite the fact that it was Morgan who’d asked for Cade’s help when the combined Saxon and demon force had swept through his lands earlier in the year. He was in favor of combining forces to fight off his enemies, just as long as he didn’t have to be responsible for the defense of other men’s lands.
Cade closed his eyes in a brief prayer for strength and then opened them to study Morgan as he approached the front of the hall. It was just like him to point an accusing finger at Cade, no matter what the situation or the fault. Cade found his anger dissipating instead of increasing as Morgan got closer, even turning to amusement. He had to swallow hard to contain it. If he could deal with two demons, he could speak to a recalcitrant lord.
And then he did laugh when Morgan and Rhys stumbled over the prone figure of one of Cade’s men-at-arms as they scampered to get away from the two demons on the floor.
Christianity had made its greatest inroads among the nobility of Wales, more than among the common folk, and Morgan and Rhys were no exception. They ascribed to the new religion, viewed themselves as superior for holding with it, and believed the ancient traditions of the Welsh were a thing of the past. To them, the sidhe had lost themselves in their misty world and no longer had any influence over the world of men. More than that, they were sure—or had been right up to that moment—of their place in that world and their knowledge of it. Cade damped down his amusement and chose, again, to follow the high road in his dealings with them.
“I apologize, my lords, for the refuse on the floor,” he said. “As you can see, the entire fort was taken unawares by powers over which not even I have control.”
While Rhys and Morgan gaped at the demons, Taliesin sidled up to Cade, half-turning his body so the men from Powys could neither hear him nor read his lips. “Congratulations. That was just about perfect. You disarm their anger with your apology, while at the same time implying that your strengths are superior to anyone who is not a god. Excellent.”
Rhys pointed his finger at Cade. “You promised us we would be safe here.”
“I appreciate that you accord me the ability to control demons,” Cade said, “but I’m afraid in this you give me too much credit. I have killed every demon I have come across, but these were sent by Mabon, son of Arawn, who does as he pleases, even in my castle. In truth, we should all be frightened of that power. It is more than an inconvenience.”
Morgan’s eyes narrowed. If Cade had breath, he would have held it, knowing that his words, although spoken mildly, might have pushed Morgan too far. The last thing Morgan wanted to do was acknowledge Cade’s authority.
“If the demons have harmed anyone from Powys, I will hold you personally responsible,” Morgan said. “None of the rest of the kings of Wales treat with them, yet the songs that bard of yours creates say you meet them at every turn. I find it disconcerting that demons would make themselves known to the King of Gwynedd.”
“Sometimes a man finds battle thrust upon him,” Cade said. “In those instances, there is little he can do but stand and fight.”
“My lords.” Rhiann glided forward, brushing off this catastrophic ending to her wedding as if it meant nothing to her. “I’m sure you are concerned about your ladies. Perhaps it’s best if we see to their safety and comfort.”
Rhys appeared to want to continue posturing and sputtered his protest, but his father nodded at Rhiann, the movement curt but approving. With Rhiann at their side, they made their way back to where their wives huddled, only just beginning to recover from Mabon’s spell.
“First Arawn at Caer Dathyl, then Camulos on the battlefield, and now demons at Deganwy.” Rhun helped Bronwen to her feet and moved nearer to the other companions. “Striking you at the times you feel strongest shows an audacity and cunning with which I hadn’t credited him.”
Cade looked at Taliesin who was leaning on his staff, studying Rhun. “Do you think this is really all Mabon’s idea? Could he not only be working with other gods, but for one more powerful than he is?”
Taliesin didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge that Cade had asked a question. Hywel, meanwhile, had recovered a bit more. He walked to where the two demons lay and crouched beside the first. He fingered one of the arrows, surely noting that it was his, and then straightened before poking the body with his toe.
Cade tucked a foot under the hip of the demon Rhiann had killed and flipped him onto his back. He recoiled at the creature’s grotesque features.
“Black thy horse and thy cape and thy heart, Mabon, the messenger of death.” Taliesin spoke in a deep voice that almost didn’t sound like his own.
Cade hadn’t heard him speak those words before and glanced at the bard.
Taliesin gave an uncharacteristic shrug. “It has come to me that we sail in uncharted waters—more and more so every day. The brotherhood of seers, of which I am the last, did not foresee what has come to pass, either at Caer Dathyl or here. We are outside the old prophecies now.”
Cade looked at Taliesin, who, perhaps was already regretting his frankness and had turned his face from him to gaze at the demons’ bodies. “I know you fear it, Taliesin, but to my mind, that is a good thing. It is time we left their world and made our own.”
* * * * *
RHIANN’S BREATHING quieted, becoming slower and more even. It was the moment for which Cade had been waiting—but now that it came to it, he didn’t want to leave her and a part of him didn’t see why he should. This was their first night together after all. He’d held her, and loved her, and been loved in return. Since Arianrhod had changed him, he’d assumed that such a love wouldn’t be possible for him. Arianrhod might have given him gifts of sidhe: immortality, strength, a fire within him beyond all imagining. But Rhiann had given him the gift of herself. Nothing could be more powerful than that.
Rhiann had fallen asleep in his arms, curled onto her side and facing away from him, her hands tucked under her chin. Cade brushed his lips over her hair and ran his hand along her hip, but she didn’t waken. He would have stayed if she had, but he forced himself to ease away from her, sit up, and swing his legs over the side of the bed. Rhiann had told him that even on her wedding night, she would rather wake with him gone than find herself lying beside his still body. It would be like waking beside a dead man.
Even though he was that dead man, he could appreciate how awkward that might feel. The panic in her face when she’d shaken him in the clearing before the battle with the demons had stayed with him. Besides, sleeping left him far more vulnerable than he wanted. It was difficult for him to believe, even though he used to be human, that men could sleep and lose themselves to dreams every night.
He hadn’t remembered worrying about it particularly as a youth. What if disaster struck while everyone was asleep? While it gave greater urgency to the importance of setting a watch, it was he, among all the residents of the fort, who had the best chance to hold off what came against them now.
Cade sketched a path through the sleeping fort, more shadow than man when he chose to be, and exited through a side door to the keep. Rhun stepped out of the entrance to the stables. The afternoon’s rain had stopped and the moon had come out. It shown brightly, illuminating Rhun’s face.
“I didn’t know if the lure of sleep would draw you in again,” Rhun said.
“Not tonight.” Cade walked to where Rhun waited.
“Are you ready?”
“Always.” Cade turned and led the way to the postern gate.
Rhun greeted the sentry. “Evening, Aeron.”
“My lords.” Aeron leaped to his feet. Fortunately for him, he didn’t have a doxy on his lap and had no need to fear Cade’s wrath. One might think that the postern gate watch would be the most despised of all watches at Deganwy, seeing how the guard stood alone, isolated from his companions, other than perhaps a sleepy stable boy. Cade knew from boyhood, however, that it was coveted for just that reason. It was the perfect spot for a man to tryst, should he be of that mind.
“We’ll knock as usual when we want back in,” Cade said as he slipped through the gate. Rhun followed close behind. Cade felt his friend breathe deeply and relish the night air outside the fort. It shouldn’t have been any different than the air inside, but Cade and Rhun had looked forward to their evening sojourns throughout the years.
Rhun’s marriage to Bronwen, coupled with Cade’s conversion to sidhe, had put a stop to them for a while. After the debacle at Bryn y Castell last winter, when Cade had gone out on his own and encountered a band of hostile men and demons, Cade had promised not to travel alone anymore unless he couldn’t help it. He didn’t need Rhun to remind him what kind of trouble he’d gotten into.
Rhun was thinking along similar lines. “Do you remember the first time we left Bryn y Castell like this?”
Cade’s lips twitched. “We were what? Seven? We imagined ourselves bold knights, sneaking past the guard while he was distracted by a maid. We didn’t realize it wasn’t yet ten in the evening, for all that the fort was quiet.”
“We lasted all of a dozen breaths before we were scrambling to get back inside.” Rhun grinned. “The guard swore he’d never tell, but that we weren’t to go out on our own again. He ran to Father instantly, of course.”
The two men laughed together, recalling the subsequent summons to Cynyr’s study and his stern visage. He’d not reprimanded them as they’d feared he would, however. Instead, he’d confessed that he was short two guards. He’d asked that they take their turn at watch duty along with the other men-at-arms, in order to prevent those who didn’t have permission to leave the fort, like Rhun and Cade had done, from finding themselves in trouble. The boys had been excited to do real work, staying up far past their previous bedtimes, and relieved to have escaped punishment—or even detection. Or so they thought.
“How long was it before we realized that it was all a scheme to keep us within the gates?” Rhun said. “Three years?”
“At least.” Cade smiled at the memory. “We were much loved.”
Then he shifted, scenting the air. After the hubbub in the hall had subsided, Cade had sent men to find out how the demons had gotten into the fort. As it turned out, they’d taken out the guard who’d been watching the postern gate, although they hadn’t killed him. For that, Cade had to be thankful, and it made him wonder even more what Mabon was up to. The guard, naturally, didn’t remember a thing.
Cade crouched low to the ground. Despite their varied and unusual qualities, demons couldn’t fly. Just like humans, they would have left traces of their passage at the base of the wall, along with a smell that hadn’t dispersed so much that Cade couldn’t detect it. Cade led Rhun away from the fort, following the clear footprints the demons had left.
“Could they have come through the village?” Rhun said.
Cade glanced back at his friend. Rhun strolled unconcernedly behind Cade, acting as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Of course, he possessed neither sight nor smell to aid Cade in his work. He was there as bodyguard and to rein Cade in if he became reckless. Cade had overheard Rhiann’s admonition to Rhun and his subsequent promise to protect him. Cade resolved not to do anything foolish, at least not tonight.
“I hope not. I think we would have heard.” Cade returned his eyes to the ground. “Many of the villagers were invited to our wedding feast. None of them knew in advance of our strange visitors, nor were missing family members, despite what the demons threatened.”
“Perhaps Mabon is both powerful and powerless,” Rhun said. “Perhaps he can only work through demons or humans to harm us—as with the murder of Cadfael by Teregad.”
“That’s an interesting thought,” Cade said. “Even Camulos, though he did knock me from my horse, didn’t rip out my throat.”
“Perhaps the gods only have the power we give them,” Rhun said.
That was a more philosophical statement than Cade had ever heard from Rhun. Still, Mabon had done damage, if only by releasing the demons that preyed on human flesh. It did seem, however, that his great strength lay in influencing others to do his dirty work for him. Something to think on.
They left the defenses of the fort and entered the rugged terrain that restricted any secretive approach to Deganwy. Many stunted trees and bushes had found a home on the slopes of the mountain. After following the precipitous slope for a hundred feet, they reached the bottom and slipped together under the trees that formed a ring around the fort.
Once inside the woods, Cade pulled up short. Silence descended on them, and it was one that Cade recognized as unnatural. The small sounds of the forest were never quiet unless they were frightened into it. A slight breeze lifted the leaves on the trees and the lock of hair across Cade’s forehead. Cade turned into it, still trying to catch the scent of the demons, but it had dissipated. Something else had disturbed the creatures here.
Cade glanced back at Rhun who gazed west towards the fort, listening. “Do you wish for a torch?” It was dark under the trees, but they weren’t so close together that some light from the moon and stars didn’t penetrate.
“No.” Rhun shook himself out of his reverie. “I can see my feet.”
Cade led Rhun eastward, deeper into the forest, always following the footprints.
Then Rhun pulled up short. “See here.” He gestured to the ground, to footprints that intersected the ones they’d been following. “These also belong to our two demons.”
Cade crouched to inspect them. “You’re right. It looks like they circled the fort before entering it.”
“We should foll—”
A sudden shaking interrupted Rhun’s words. The two men froze, uncertain what they were feeling, but when a branch above their heads cracked and fell, missing Rhun by inches, Cade pushed at his friend.
“Back!”
They fled towards Deganwy, dodging dead trees and branches that seemed to leap out at them as they passed.
“This could shake the fort right off its mountain!” Rhun jumped over a tree that had fallen in the path.
Cade had Caledfwlch in his hand and hacked at a tangle of bracken than blocked his way. Every time he put a foot down, it felt as if his knees would buckle and bring him to the ground. Part of him wanted to stop and just hang onto the nearest tree, but he was compelled to keep running. He felt he was safe only in the brief moments he was airborne.
Gradually, as they got closer to the fort, the shaking slowed and then subsided. Cade’s heart, if he’d had one, would have been pounding right out of his chest. They’d returned home ten times faster than they’d gone out. From the edge of the woods, he gazed up at the fort, relieved to see that it still stood and looked the same as it had an hour earlier.
“It has been some time since I felt such fear as that.” Rhun stumbled to a halt, one hand on the smooth surface of a tree trunk and the other at his ribs.
Cade snorted under his breath. “I shouted like a wounded cow. I let every animal, human, or demon within a mile of Deganwy know we were here.”
“It was the unexpected nature of it,” Rhun said. “I’ve heard of rumblings in the earth but never felt one. Is this Mabon’s doing too?”
“Let’s pray it isn’t. For Mabon to have the power to control the surface of the earth would make him even more daunting—and erratic—than we’d already thought him.”
“Your conclusion pleases me as well.”
The voice echoed on all sides. The two men twisted around nearly full circle looking for its source, before they saw the shimmering of light and smoke. As they watched, the light took the shape of a woman, coalescing out of mist into solid flesh. She stood in the cleared space between the base of the mountain and the trees, as unexpected and unlooked for as she’d been after the events at Caer Dathyl.
“Madam.” Cade bowed low. Hastily, Rhun copied him.
“Noble servants,” Arianrhod said, “I am looking for my son. I heard his name fall from your lips this night. Have you heard from him?”
Cade blinked, uncertain how to respond to Arianrhod’s request and undone by the fact that here was something Arianrhod didn’t know or couldn’t control. “Mabon is not here.” He straightened and forced himself to look into Arianrhod’s face. “We do have word of him, however. This evening, two demons entered Deganwy at your son’s behest. Or so they said.”
Arianrhod fixed her eyes on Cade’s. The force of her will burrowed into his mind, and he couldn’t look away or move. He couldn’t have breathed even if he were capable of it. He hoped that Rhun, who was also frozen, wasn’t finding it equally impossible.
“Did these demons, as you call them, say what they wanted?” Arianrhod said.
“They claimed Mabon sent them to collect Dyrnwyn, the Sword of the White Hilt, from me. Mabon believes that I have it,” Cade said.
“Does he?” Arianrhod sounded very much like Taliesin. Cade couldn’t read her any more than he could his friend.
“Yes, Madam. I know no more than that,” Cade said.
“But my son did not come himself.”
“No.” Cade warred with himself as to whether he should mention the incident with the boar after the battle against the demons, but while he was deliberating, Arianrhod spoke again.
“Very well.” She snapped out of existence with hardly a blink or heartbeat between the instant she was there and then not. In her place stood a doe. Her soft eyes gazed at the two men with guileless innocence. The three creatures stared at each other, and then with a twitch of her tail, the deer bounded into the woods.
At her departure, Rhun collapsed onto his hands and knees in the grass, gasping for breath. “Is that what it’s like every time?”
“Yes, and no,” Cade said. “Every time is exactly the same and yet unique.”
“Where do you think the doe’s gone?” Rhun said. “A foolish man might harm it.”
“I will send word to the people of the village not to touch her. None of them want to be indebted to Arianrhod,” Cade said.
Rhun nodded. “Better to starve than that.”
Cade knelt next to him, one arm across his shoulders. “She didn’t hurt you, did she?” The sudden fear of it burned in his chest. “Tell me you don’t feel any different than an hour ago!”
“Her very essence bored into me,” Rhun said. “From the moment she stood in front of us, I couldn’t move; couldn’t think. As far as I could tell, even my heart ceased to beat. She sucked all life and breath from me.”
Cade could appreciate how Rhun felt. Cade’s first encounter with Arianrhod had left him a sidhe. He couldn’t blame Rhun for being overwhelmed by her presence, even if she’d ignored him and focused, as usual, on Cade. Cade helped Rhun to his feet and turned him so he could study his face. Rhun’s eyes were bloodshot, but still his own.
“I am well,” Rhun said. “She came to see you, as she always does, although as always she leaves us with more questions than answers.”
“She’s searching for Mabon,” Cade said. “Why can’t she find him?”
“Maybe because he doesn’t want to be found,” Rhun said. “Not a pleasant thought.”
Cade returned his gaze to the spot where Arianrhod had stood. “The gods meddle in the lives of men. I fear that when they do that, the result is never what we’d hope.”
“Come,” Rhun said, more in control of himself. “You and I should return to the fort. I know you hoped we could linger at Deganwy, but Arianrhod’s visit puts a new urgency to the coming fight with the Saxons. We can’t face Mabon and the Saxons at the same time, and the Saxons are pressing. I will go with Siawn to muster his men and mine. Where shall we meet you?”
“Caer Fawr, in Powys.” Cade fell into step beside Rhun, thinking hard. “I wish Taliesin had been with us tonight. This is something he should have been able to foresee.”
“He doesn’t see at all anymore, does he?” Rhun said.
“No,” Cade said.
“Even had he foreseen the events of this night, would you have been well served by him telling you of them in advance? Would we have done differently than we did?”
Cade thought about that for a moment. “Perhaps not.” Again, Taliesin’s first words of advice came to him: Without the prophecy, would the man still act? Or does the prophecy determine the action? Only one who knows himself can answer that.
Did he know himself? He used to think he did. Now... maybe he should ask Rhiann.
Rhiann
––––––––
CADE AND RHIANN LEFT Deganwy for Dinas Bran at sunset two days later. They were doing as Taliesin had asked, as a precursor to facing the Saxons. Taliesin thought they had a week or two of breathing space before an actual assault would come. But no more than that.
“Are you sure you’re all right with leaving so soon after the wedding?” Cade said as they set out along the Conwy River, heading south towards the old Roman road that would take them to Dinas Bran. Their men carried a dozen torches to light up the night, and for once it wasn’t raining. They weren’t moving particularly quickly either, and Rhiann hadn’t even changed into her male garments, but wore a dress with a voluminous skirt designed for riding.
“I’m with you,” Rhiann said. It hadn’t exactly been the wedding she’d planned and hoped for, but she’d ended up married to Cade and that was all that mattered. “Besides, Taliesin is sure that this is the right course.”
“The Saxons gather in Shrewsbury,” Cade said, “near the old Roman fort of Viroconium. We must prepare to counter them.”
“Going to Dinas Bran now is the first step towards doing that,” Taliesin said from Rhiann’s other side.
“What I don’t understand is the Saxons’ purpose,” Rhiann said. “Why do they confront us now?”
“Cerdic of Wessex wants Morgan of Powys’ rich farmland, even if Morgan doesn’t want to face the magnitude of the threat,” Cade said. “The Mercian alliance with Gwynedd, which my father made and Cadfael confirmed, only bought us time. The Saxons still want what we have. With Cadfael dead, they know I won’t be as easy a mark, and they seek to strike before I’ve fully consolidated my power.”
“Are you sure they even know that my father is dead?” Rhiann said.
“Of course they d—” Cade began to speak and then broke off. He turned to look at Taliesin. “Don’t they?”
“Did you send them word?” Taliesin said.
“No,” Cade said.
“It isn’t as if he hasn’t been a little busy,” Rhiann said.
“It would be more normal than not to have sent him a message, however,” Taliesin said, “at least to tell Penda that you claimed the throne of Gwynedd. Didn’t you think to inform him of the severance of the treaty?”
Cade blinked, and Rhiann knew what was going through his mind: there was a lot more to governing than winning battles, and he would have thought that someone would have mentioned diplomacy a little sooner.
“Penda wouldn’t have heard from Cadfael since February,” Rhiann said. “Surely he must realize that something is amiss?”
Cade laughed. “That was the day you refused to marry Peada and we killed his warriors while escaping. That would be reason enough for Penda to assume Cadfael has turned against him.”
“So Penda might attack us out of revenge for that?” Rhiann’s heart leaped to her throat.
Cade put a hand on her arm. “Do you regret refusing him?”
“Of course not!” Rhiann said. “But if that’s true, this is my fault!”
“If we meet Penda’s army in Powys, it will be Penda’s doing,” Cade said. “You are not responsible for another’s actions.”
“But—” Rhiann still felt sick.
“Wasn’t the purpose of your escape from Aberffraw to save your husband’s life?” Taliesin said.
That brought Rhiann back to her senses. “This isn’t going to be easy. Penda knows his ground and has fought over it before. I was only seven at the time, but I remember what an important victory it was for Penda and my father, in defeating King Oswin of Northumbria. Cadfael thought he’d be crowned High King after that.”
“Even then, the kings of Wales didn’t trust him enough to grant it to him,” Cade said. “For good reason.”
“Who holds Dinas Bran now?” Rhiann had never seen the lonely fortress that her father’s men had described to her, squatting on its mountain a thousand feet above the valley floor.
“Last I heard, it was abandoned,” Taliesin said.
Rhiann stared at him. “Abandoned? It’s the seat of the High King!”
“And how long has it been since we’ve had a High King, Rhiannon?” Cade said.
“Since your father died, I know,” Rhiann said. “But I hadn’t realized things had decayed so far in twenty years.”
“The alliance with the Saxons—by both my father and Cadfael—allowed the Welsh to become more comfortable with their lives and lands than was wise,” Cade said. “We became complacent.”
“So why won’t you ally with Penda too?” Rhiann said. “It would be a logical course of action. He is your uncle.”
“You can’t seriously be asking me that, Rhiann,” Cade said.
“It would give you breathing room to strengthen your position as King of Gwynedd,” Rhiann said, “and give you time to convince all these Welsh kings to band together instead of taking on the Saxons separately because they don’t see the need to work with one another.”
“Peada was going to marry you by force,” Cade said. “How can you suggest that I ally with any Saxon?”
“It isn’t I who’s doing the asking, Cade,” Rhiann said. “You are half-Saxon yourself. Penda is your uncle! Your men, your allies—all will wonder why the change in policy. You need to have an answer before we find ourselves attacked by an overwhelming Saxon force that refuses to talk peace.”
“Isn’t it enough that Cadfael and Penda—or his emissaries—find it convenient to ally themselves with demons?” Cade said.
Rhiann laughed. “I suppose that’s a compelling argument.”
Taliesin rubbed the stubby blonde hairs on his chin that refused to grow to a man’s length. “To my mind, it’s time the Welsh stopped dying in Saxon lands. It would be one thing if the alliance was a treaty of non-aggression. It’s quite another to march our people east and north to die for Penda when the Saxons have never died for us.”
“My father was still trying to win back the lands that Vortigern had lost,” Cade said. “He thought an alliance with Penda might help him gain territory from other Saxon regions. I have no such hope. The Saxons are too many now, and we understand them too little.”
“And it was only Penda who increased his reach, not your father—not mine,” Rhiann said. “I wonder if it wasn’t more of a devil’s bargain Penda offered rather than a promise to work together in mutual trust and agreement: ally with me or I’ll attack you.”
Cade smiled. “Can you imagine Cadfael experiencing mutual trust with anyone? It’s horrifying to think on.”
Rhiann couldn’t help but agree with that. Cadfael may have been her father, but he was a tyrant and a bully. The ambush and murder of all of Cade’s men, including his foster father, was just the last in a long list of atrocities Cadfael had ordered. That Cade had any companions left was due more to chance and good fortune than planning. Back in February, he’d left Rhun and a handful of his men at Dinas Emrys to guard the fort—and that was the only reason they were still alive.
And now those companions were scattered: Rhun had left for western Gwynedd with Siawn, as had Tudur, each to marshal men under their jurisdiction. Cade had sent Dafydd, Bedwyr, Hywel, and Goronwy south as Dafydd had wanted. Dafydd was for Ceredigion, in southwest Wales, and the other three had gone to Powys and Gwent, in hopes of gathering an alliance of kings. They would meet again at Caer Fawr, in Powys, in ten days’ time.
Although Dinas Bran was the seat of the High King, in these dangerous times it was too far for the southern and western kings to travel. Not that they couldn’t have made the journey north as easily as Cade could come south, but it would leave their lands unguarded for too long. Asking them to come all the way to Gwynedd to meet him—perhaps even to crown him High King—would be one request too many.
Caer Fawr was a fortified outpost near the road from the old Roman fort of Caersws and within striking distance of Shrewsbury, where the Saxons gathered. The other kings who’d attended the wedding had sworn their allegiance to Cade, some more out of fear than loyalty, given the appalling events of that day. The question that remained unanswered was whether or not they were willing to give Cade fighting men as well. That was always the question.
Other than Taliesin, Geraint was the only close companion to accompany them. He rode at the rear, taking what was usually Rhun’s place and allowing Cade to lead the three dozen men-at-arms and knights. The company reached the Roman road at the Conwy River crossing and turned east. Soon, the land became more difficult and forested and they could no longer see the sea. They skirted hills and mountains that enclosed them on all sides.
“How long do we have to ride?” Rhiann said.
“Denbigh is just a few miles further on. I hope to reach it by morning, and we’ll spend the day there.” Cade glanced at her. “I would hope you could sleep today.”
Rhiann pulled her cloak closer around her shoulders and gripped the reins more tightly. The wind whipped her face and the branches above their heads swayed with it. She glanced towards the woods to her left and thought she saw something move among the trees. She peered closer but could make out nothing more than the shadows of the trees themselves, eerie in the half light of their torches. A chill ran down Rhiann’s spine.
“What is it?” Cade said.
“I don’t know.” Rhiann focused again on the trees. For the next mile, she watched and waited, splitting her attention between the road and the woods surrounding them. Then she saw it again—or rather, sensed it. She put out a hand to Cade, and he slowed.
Geraint trotted his horse along the side of the column to the front. “There’s something there. Taliesin?”
But the bard merely hunched his shoulders and didn’t answer.
“Rhiann has sensed it too,” Cade said. “It isn’t overtly hostile, at least not yet. We should keep moving. The sooner we get to Denbigh the better.”
They rode on. Rhiann was reminded of that endless journey in the dark from Bryn y Castell to Caersws a month before. She’d been fighting her love for Cade then, not married to him, and certainly that made a difference in her heart. But it still beat fast. Her fear, that night, had been about what was up ahead, not what was behind or beside her. “Can you see it?”
“No,” Cade said. “No more than you. But it races beside us.”
“Like ... a boar?”
“I wouldn’t say so,” Taliesin said. “This is something different. More ominous.”
“So you can sense it,” Cade said.
“Of course,” Taliesin said. “But its intent is not clear to me. I suggest we ride faster.”
Boar or not, the menace rode at Rhiann’s shoulder, though whenever she looked into the woods, she saw nothing but endless trees. There was something about the darkness that pressed on her. She wished they could have traveled during the day. In daylight, this thing wouldn’t have menaced them, she was sure, and the trees would have waved in the breeze as if nothing stalked underneath the branches.
But that would have been impossible for Cade. The forest was just leafing out in spring, normally her favorite time of year. Tonight, the trees appeared black and menacing, glistening damply in the moonlight from the shower that had just passed.
Taliesin sat completely silent, beyond that one comment. Both Rhiann and Cade kept glancing at him, hoping for insight or at the very least an appropriate poem, chant, or incantation that might drive it away.
Finally, Taliesin spoke, and the words when they came were obviously reluctant. “I’ve told you. I no longer see—I am no longer of any help to you whatever. For now, I remain a dead weight around your neck.”
“Even were you in your dotage, you would never hinder or hang on me in any way,” Cade said. “You are still wise, even if your knowledge is no longer augmented by the sight.”
The murkiness of the night was drifting towards morning when they finally approached the outskirts of Denbigh. This fort was situated on a rocky height, with the ridgeline of mountains behind it.
“You should travel on without me,” Cade said as they pulled to a halt under the gatehouse of the fort. “This creature, whatever it is, won’t harm you in daylight.”
That was close to what Rhiann had thought herself, though she wouldn’t consider riding without her husband. Fortunately, instead of leaving it to her, Taliesin told him he was ridiculous.
“You claim to respect my wisdom, so listen to it now,” Taliesin said. “That is a foolish idea. No good would come of it.”
Cade pursed his lips but didn’t contradict him, for which Rhiann was glad. As much as she feared this shadow, it hadn’t harmed them so far, and leaving Cade to travel on his own or with a smaller escort, would have been far worse than living with the fear.
Or so it seemed while they were within the safety of the fort. But when Rhiann tried to sleep, the light in the room and the memory of the shadow under the trees, kept her awake. By evening, she felt as if she had sand under her eyelids.
They’d survived one night, but they had two more before they would reach Dinas Bran. Cade tried again, just before they left the fort, to change the plan. “I will ride ahead. It will follow me.”
“Are you sure of that?” Taliesin said.
Rhiann sensed that he meant to sound witty, but she heard fear in his voice, and a possible truth hit her: this could be something that stalked Taliesin, not Cade. “No. We ride together or not at all.”
Taliesin shot her a glance that told her he’d heard her thoughts. She didn’t care. It seemed to her that Taliesin was torn between admitting his need for Cade’s protection and fearing that he was putting them all in danger. In truth, if he needed help, he had only to ask. He should know better than to be so stubborn. But then, her husband was equally recalcitrant. Fortunately, in this case, Cade didn’t need more persuading.
The shadow haunted them as they rode.
“Let’s just go in and get it,” Geraint said, finally, his patience stretched too thin.
“No,” Taliesin. “That is what it wants. If you were to enter the woods, it would lead you on, and we would lose you.”
“It,” Cade said. “You mean Mabon? Or Camulos?”
Talisein shook his head. “I’m not sure this is Mabon’s doing.”
“Then who?” Rhiann said.
Taliesin shook his head again. “I can’t—” He stopped and tried again. “I don’t know.”
Another night passed, and then another day. Three hours out of Dinas Bran, it happened.
A man in the middle of the company was first to call a warning. “Watch out!”
Rhiann, whose head had been sinking to her chin, jerked awake just in time to find Cade’s arms wrapped around her. He dragged her from her horse, and she sprawled across his lap, her face in his chest.
“Don’t look.”
She didn’t even think to struggle, so commanding was his voice. “What’s happening!” Her voice went high in fear, but Cade answered, as calm as ever.
“Something you don’t need to see.” But then he raised his chin. “Hold! Hold I say!”
All around her men shouted, and swords clashed, not obeying Cade, which was almost more horrible than the fear of what surrounded them that he refused to let her see. From somewhere to her left, Taliesin chanted words in a language she didn’t understand, and all the while, Cade hugged her to him. She wished she could feel the beating of his heart and the rise and fall of his chest, but it was like being pressed against a pillar, though one that was more secure than any support she’d ever known.
After a short while, the noise of fighting faded, and Cade eased his hold on Rhiann. She kept her face in his chest, however, afraid to look at what had happened to her friends and companions. “Is Geraint—”
“Taliesin protected him, but he couldn’t save everyone.”
Rhiann raised her head to look into Cade’s face, and he shifted with her so she could see Taliesin and Geraint. She didn’t know what Taliesin had done to their friend, but it couldn’t have been pleasant since Geraint lay on the ground beneath him, unmoving, if not unconscious, with Taliesin straddling him. Taliesin held his staff out in front of him with both hands clenched around the middle, as if he planned to spar with it. Perhaps he had. All around them, their men moaned in pain, some with bleeding wounds, others with hands to heads that had suffered heavy blows. One man threw up beside the road. There was no sign of any enemy who might have attacked them.
“What happened?” Rhiann said.
“A malevolent force.” Cade nodded at Taliesin, who lowered his staff and crouched beside Geraint.
“Up,” he said.
Geraint put a hand to his head. “What did you do to me?”
“Stressed your throat until you passed out,” Taliesin said. “Better that than allow you to run one of your own men through.”
And as Rhiann looked around at the fallen men, she realized that was exactly what had happened. “Do you mean to say that they did this to each other?”
Cade forced out a breath. “Yes. When the shadow overcame us, it drove them mad. They fell upon each other until Taliesin was able to drive it back, into the woods.”
“But you were immune?” Rhiann said.
“Of course,” Cade said.
“As was I,” Taliesin said, “but only because I could see through it and could name its core.”
“And what was it?” Rhiann said. “Its name, I mean?”
“Evil,” Taliesin said. “More than that, I will not say as yet.”
Cade lowered Rhiann to the ground, and she went to her saddle bags where she kept her cloths and bandages. She didn’t need them often, what with Cade’s healing sword, and as she turned to ask Cade whom she should tend first, he’d already crouched beside one of the wounded men. A sword had slashed the man’s belly, and he scrabbled to close the wound. Gently, Cade pushed one of his hands away and laid the other on the hilt of Caledfwlch. The wound began to heal and the man fell back. “Thank you, my lord.”
Rhiann met Cade’s eyes. One of this man’s own companions had done this to him, and perhaps he’d done worse in return. This shadow was a menace beyond reason or reckoning. Perhaps that was what Taliesin had been trying to tell them.
