I clenched my fist, convinced that this was the latest example of Stangmar’s cruelty. “How could he have done such a monstrous thing?”
“Because he is just that: a monster.” Her face twitched in rage. “To prey on an innocent child like this!”
I sucked in my breath. “It could have been you, Mother.”
She started, dropping her cloth. “What?”
Grimly, I nodded. “When he escaped from his prison, he said he was coming after you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. And he killed two prison guards when they tried to stop him.”
She stared at me, aghast. “Killed them?”
“With his bare hands.”
Suddenly her face relaxed a little. “Then whoever you’re talking about didn’t attack this boy.”
“What do you mean?”
“The farmer,” she explained, “said it was a warrior, an immense man.”
“Yes! That’s—”
“Wait,” she commanded. “Let me finish. He said it was a warrior who had . . .” She stopped, her expression bewildered. “No hands. He had sword blades attached to his shoulders. Sword blades—instead of arms.”
I shook my head in disbelief. Stangmar wasn’t responsible for this? Who was, then? All at once, I remembered my dream just before the vision of Dagda had appeared. A warrior with swords instead of arms! My thoughts whirled. Rhita Gawr’s plot. Stangmar’s escape. And now this.
“But why?” Rhia demanded, bending over the boy. “It’s so utterly cruel.”
Our mother ran a hand through her shimmering hair. “No one knows. The warrior, whoever he was, strode off into the eastward plains. He didn’t try to challenge the farmer, just left the boy in a bloody heap.”
I scowled, gazing at the stump of the severed ear. “Where is his family?”
“He has none.” She set down her cloth, brought forth a strip of moss that had been dipped in lemon balm, and placed it in the boy’s mouth. “Chew that, my son, but don’t swallow,” she whispered. Turning back to me, she explained, “He’s an orphan child.”
The words struck me like a hammer in my chest.
Orphan child.
All those years in that miserable village, I’d believed myself an orphan. They were years of loneliness and longing, ending in one moment of terror I could never forget. Dinatius attacking . . . flames roaring . . . my very skin burning. His last, agonized cries before he died—and my own, before I went blind.
Without thinking, I touched the ribbed scars on my cheek. Looking down at the boy, I knew that he, too, would bear scars all his life, the worst of them invisible. Just then he turned his head toward me. His eyes seemed to focus, and I felt the weight of his gaze.
I shifted uneasily. As much as I yearned to say something comforting to him, another part of me resisted. He was in my mother’s care, not mine. And the truth was . . . I wanted him to stay that way. It was all too close, too raw. I turned away.
But I found myself facing Rhia, who was also watching the boy. She nudged my side. “He’s interested in you, Merlin.”
“Why should he be?” I retorted. “Mother’s taking care of him.”
“Only for the time being,” Elen herself interjected. She stroked the boy’s tangle of curls. “His ear’s been cleaned and dressed, and should heal well enough. It’s the inner wounds that worry me more. The ones I can’t touch.”
“Has he spoken yet?” asked Rhia.
“Not a word.” She kept running her hand through his sandy hair. “I don’t even know his name.”
At that, the boy coughed, and spat out the moss. Thickly, he said, “Lleu. Me name’s . . . Lleu.”
Our mother brightened. “Well then, Lleu, I’m glad to know you. My name is Elen.”
He started to speak again, but she shushed him. “Not yet, my son. Not too fast. You’ve had a wicked day today.”
“Mother,” I said urgently. “More wickedness is afoot! We came here to warn you.”
“About that man? The one you said escaped from prison?”
I nodded.
“Why should he want to harm me?”
“Because it’s Stangmar.”
At once, the ruddy color drained from her cheeks. She sank down on the wooden planks of the stage, looking almost as drawn as Lleu. In time she moistened her lips. “He’s . . . free?”
“Yes,” I declared.
“And looking for you,” Rhia added. “He’s bent on . . .”
Elen closed her eyes. “Not on harming me. No, he wouldn’t.”
“He would!” I insisted, leaning closer. “He most surely would.”
Slowly, she shook her head.
“Elen!” called a deep voice.
I whirled around to see a tall, weathered man pushing his way through the crowd of onlookers. Cairpré! As he slid past Ionn, he patted the stallion’s back. Ionn, in return, nipped at the scarf of gray wool wrapped around the poet’s neck.
His dark, observant eyes, crowned with bushy tufts of graying hair, fell upon me. “Merlin! And Rhia, too! I only wish our meeting could have been at a gladder moment.”
“Cairpré,” I began, “we have news.”
“Not now,” he said, waving his hand. “First we must move the boy out of the cold. This stage is no place to spend the night.” His gaze took in Elen. “Are you all right, my dear? You look stricken.”
“Yes, yes,” she said weakly.
The bard offered his hand. “What is it?”
“Later,” she answered, pushing his hand aside. “Did you find a hut for the boy?”
“And for us, as well. I’ve already brought your warm vest and your other things. There’s enough space for Rhia and Merlin, too.” He beckoned. “Now come down off there.”
She peered at Lleu’s round face. “Are you able to walk yet? Or shall I carry you?”
He groaned, fidgeted, and slowly sat up. Gingerly, he reached to touch the side of his head. Before he could, she caught his hand. “Not yet, my son. Wait till the morning.”
Fear kindled anew in his eyes, but when she put her arm around his shoulder, he calmed a little. With care, she helped him off the stage. As they came down, the villagers parted, though their whisperings continued.
Elen looked at Cairpré. “Does this hut have a hearth?”
“Not much of one, but it will serve. As the bards say,
When truly in need, my goat is a steed
.”
Ionn released a loud snort, flicking his tail against his massive thigh. The poet rubbed his chin and smiled wryly. “My apologies, old friend.”
With that, he started to lead us across the common. Retrieving my mother’s bowl, cloth, and pouch of herbs, I followed, as did Rhia. Ionn trotted heavily behind, his hooves pounding on the dirt.
8:
L
OOK
F
OR
M
E
W
ANDERING
The hut, which had recently been used by the village goats, smelled of dung and fur. It held not even a single shaft of straw for bedding. And its hearth was nothing more than some charred river stones arranged in a circle in the center of the dirt floor. But after we lit the fire, using a few sticks that had been stacked by the wall, and swept the floor of debris, the hut seemed somewhat more comfortable. For whatever reason, Lleu continued to watch me closely, a fact I tried my best to ignore. The greater his interest, the greater my unease.
For supper we sat around the crackling hearth, sharing Cairpré’s meager rations. They were all the more meager since he had only expected to provide food for two people, not five. (Fortunately, Scullyrumpus remained soundly asleep inside Rhia’s pocket, or we would have been joined by a ravenous—and fussy—sixth.) No one seemed very hungry, though, so a few strips of dried honeyroot and some oatcakes, washed down with rill water, sufficed. We ate in silence.
In time, my mother coaxed Lleu to lie down on the floor. As she started to pull away, though, he grasped at her robe, his face tightened with fear. She nodded, gently stroked his curls, and began to sing, swaying in time to the verses. Her warm, rich voice filled the thatched hut. I found myself relaxing, along with the boy, for when I was small, she had often sung me to sleep with this very song.
Look for me wandering
Oft through the mist;
Look for me ambling
‘Tween grain and grist;
Look for me harkening
Ere any cry;
Seek for me slumbering
‘Twixt earth and sky.
Hush now and wander ye,
Oceans to sail.
Go now and gather ye,
Gold leaf and grail.
Know now the mystery,
All in between:
Find now the treasury—
Silent unseen.
May ye go wandering
‘Tween dark and light;
May ye go hurtling
Higher than height;
May ye go rambling
Far as ye can;
Lo, to find everything
Where ye began.
Hush now and slumber ye,
Never a fear.
Always I’ll cradle ye,
Ever so near.
Travel the endless trail,
Far may ye roam:
Always I’ll welcome ye—
Ever your home.
By the time the last tremulous notes faded away, the boy had closed his eyes, curling into a ball on his side. Watching him slumber, Rhia fingered her belt of woven vines. “I wish I could help him with the Orb, using its power the way it was meant to be used.”
Cairpré drew together his eyebrows, tufted like a pair of clouds. “Right now, I doubt even that could do him much good. He has known great terror—more than anyone, young or old, should ever have to know.”
I faced the poet. “There is more terror to come, I fear.”
He frowned. “How so?”
For a moment, I watched Elen tuck a tattered cloak around the boy, doing her best to cover him fully. As she rejoined us, Rhia tossed a few clumps of goat dung on the snapping flames. Then, in hushed tones, I began to describe my vision from the night before. Everyone listened carefully, asking questions only rarely. Cairpré seemed confused by Dagda’s reference to the rarest seed of all—though no more confused than I. When at last I finished, the words
when all is truly gained, all is truly lost
hung in the smoky air of the hut.
Then, my throat constricted, I repeated the story of Stangmar’s escape. Cairpré’s eyes opened wide, while my mother sat motionless, her palm against her brow. After I finished, no one spoke for some time. The only sound was the boy’s hoarse breathing and the sizzling fire of the hearth.
It was my mother, her face half in shadow, who was the first to talk again. “I remember a man different from the Stangmar you describe,” she said quietly. “A young man, awkward at times and gallant at others, who voyaged all the way to far Britannia to woo me, so great was his love. Long before Rhita Gawr seduced him, and twisted him, he was a man of ideals—flawed, yes, and vulnerable, but a man who tried to show bravery, compassion, and kindness.”
“Not Stangmar!” I countered, my temples throbbing. “It’s not possible.”
Elen smiled sadly at me. “You never knew him, the way he was. Why, he even gave me the Galator—his precious pendant, the prize of his realm—just to show his feelings for me.”
“Then he tried to murder me, his own son,” I hissed, “just to appease Rhita Gawr!”
With a forlorn sigh, she said, “I’m not defending what he has become.” She rested her head on Cairpré’s shoulder, her fingers entwining with his own. “Nor am I saying that his love was nearly as deep, or as true, as the love I’ve found since.”
Seated so close together, their faces warmed by firelight, the two of them seemed to be melting into each other. Seeing them I couldn’t help but think of Hallia, traveling northward now in search of help for our cause. How I missed her!
Cairpré loosened his woolen scarf and mused aloud. “The Galator . . . ah, but we could use its help right now! No matter that its powers remain a mystery. They must have been vast to have inspired so many glorious ballads of old.”
I recalled the pendant’s flash of glowing green. And how it had vanished forever under a mountain of lava. “It’s tragic the Galator was lost.”
“And far more tragic,” my mother added, “that the man who gave it to me was lost.” She leaned forward, peering at me. “The man I knew then, I tell you, is not the man you know now.”
I grimaced. “The man I know now is out to kill you.”
Rhia nodded. “It’s true, Mother. You must be careful.”
“And what am I supposed to do?” she demanded, her eyes glowing as bright as the fire’s coals. “Stay hidden in this crumbling mud hut? Oh no, my children, I’m not going to hide like a burrowing hare.”
“Mother,” I protested, “you must listen. He’s a madman. A killer.”
“Maybe so. But I still can’t believe he would do me any harm. Not until he tells me, or one of you, that’s what he intends!”
I shook my head. “So where will you go?”
“Wherever I choose.”
“Won’t you at least stay in this isolated village, where he won’t think to look for you, for the next two weeks? Then we can find some better way to protect you, after whatever comes to pass on the longest night.”
“Won’t you please?” echoed Rhia.
She studied us for a tense moment. At last she announced, “I shall stay here two more days, no longer. And not because I want to do it, but because my children care so much to beseech me so.”
“But—”
Cairpré silenced me with his hand. “She has a will of hardened oak, your mother.
At times to bend, though never to rend.
It’s best not even to try to change her mind. Believe me, that much I’ve learned.”
Elen smirked at him. “Are you saying I’m stubborn?”
“Oh, no. Merely obstinate, inflexible, and absolutely unshakable.”
Her blue eyes narrowed. “So you agree, then, I should stay here longer?”
“Elen,” he replied, his brow wrinkling deeply, “I agree that here is the safest place. But I know you too well, and love you too much, to ask you to do more than to try your best to stay safe. Commanding you is as good as commanding the waves of the sea, or the clouds of the sky.”
Slowly, her face relaxed. She looked at him with deep affection. “You, my poet, have given me something Stangmar never could—a gift much more precious than the Galator.”
“A gift we share,” he replied.
The fire collapsed on itself, sending a burst of glowing sparks into the air. In the flickering light, the earthen walls of the hut seemed aglow themselves; ripples of yellow and orange flowed over them like luminous waves. I glanced over at Lleu’s sleeping form, his maimed ear darkened by shadow. He looked so small, yet sturdy and brave beyond his years. Watching him slumber so serenely, after a day of such terror, I couldn’t help but feel a rush of sympathy for him. May he never have to live through another day like this!