The Emerald Flame (27 page)

Authors: Frewin Jones

T
HE BRONZE TORQUE!
No wonder the Viking maiden had beaten Bryn unconscious when he had tried to take it from her. It contained the essence of a god. A god that was now released to bring annihilation to the land of Brython.

Branwen fell to her knees as the column of black smoke rose higher and higher into the sky. As it soared up, its shape changed, its colossal thunderhead bulging outward, its tail narrowing like a whiplash. It began to spin, whirling faster and faster, sucking in darkness, looming up over the mountain. And yet all the time the fireball eyes kept their position, glaring down balefully at her.

She felt as small as an insect, and smaller still as the dreadful Viking god roared up into the night and blotted out the entire world.

I did this! I brought this terrible thing here! The Shining Ones were fools to trust me! I’ve doomed them all!

The tail of the monstrous cloud went skidding across the ground, screaming like a thousand banshees. Rocks, stones, shingles, and boulders spewed out in its wake as it tore a deep furrow in the mountain’s flesh.

Branwen threw up her shield to protect herself as the debris came raining down all around her. She felt sure she would be killed by the devastating rain of ruins, but although huge boulders and sharp spears of stone bounced and crashed all around her, she was untouched. The mystic shield was sheltering her from Ragnar’s wrath.

The mind-shredding noise abated, and Branwen peered over the rim of her shield to see that the tail of the whirling cloud was now making its way up the side of the mountain toward Merion’s cave, ripping open the mountainside in a spume of pulverized rock. Like a blind finger it probed the mountain, stabbing and searching until it found the black cave mouth.

Then, with a sound like a screaming hurricane, the black cloud began to feed into the cave mouth. Ragnar’s burning eyes turned from Branwen, filled now with unholy triumph. And as Branwen knelt there in helpless horror, the whole sable mass of the Viking god drove deep into the mountain and was gone.

Too late to give Merion back the stones that would complete her. Too late.

Branwen staggered to her feet, her arms hanging at her sides.

The mountain trembled under her, and above her the peaks rocked and quivered and crumbled.

But above the low, resonant grind of the tormented mountain, Branwen heard a sharp voice calling.

… The key … you still have the key…. Set me free, you fool! Set me free or he will destroy her!

Branwen spun around, her hand coming to her waist, her fingers gripping the small golden key.

Yes! There was still Caradoc!

But where was the casket? She had seen where it had fallen, but the entire mountainside had been overturned since then. Even Skur had been swallowed up in the chaos.

… Here! I am here, Warrior Child! Do you not see me …?

“No! Where?” Branwen shouted, stumbling over the cracked rocks. “Where are you?”
… Here, child! Under your very hand!

She dropped to her knees and scrabbled wildly in the rubble, heedless of torn nails and bleeding fingers.

Where?
Where?

The mountain was shaking now, shedding entire cliffs in its agonies, sending bastions and pinnacles thundering down in clouds of streaming smoke and ash.

Branwen’s fingernails scratched against something that was not stone. She leaned into the hole she
had delved, tossing rocks aside.

The casket was there—unharmed and whole, humming and vibrating as though Caradoc was straining to break free.

She dragged it out, the vibrations thrilling up her arms. She turned it right way up, one hand unlacing the key from her waistband.

“Will you kill me?” she gasped as she fought to insert the key into the quivering lock.

… I may…. Who is to say what I will do when I am unleashed …?

She stabbed the key into the lock and turned it. “I don’t care!” she howled. “Kill me if you must! But destroy Ragnar first, I beg you!”

She felt the lock come loose.

Farewell, Rhodri! Farewell, Iwan and Blodwedd! Farewell, my beloved mother! Farewell to all!

She wrenched open the lid. The casket was full of seething white mist.

She picked up the casket in both hands and offered it to the sky.

The white mist went surging upward, filled with laughter and madness and anger and power and joy and retribution.

“Free! Free at last!”

Branwen stared up in reverence and awe as the white cloud cavorted and gamboled in the air, sending out loops and trailers of itself, turning somersaults, dancing its acrobatic triumph across the skies.

But then the gleeful display halted; and although Caradoc had no form or face or structure, Branwen felt quite certain that his attention had become focused on the trembling mountain within which Ragnar was doing battle with Merion of the Stones.

The nebulous mass of white cloud imploded, condensing and writhing and shape-shifting, re-forming itself until the chaos found structure and the god of the North Wind hung in the air above Branwen in human form. She gazed up at him, overwhelmed and breathless. Caradoc had taken on the shape of a slim boy, beautiful and tempestuous, limber and strong, alluring but remote, wreathed in veils of shining mist. Golden eyes gazed down at her, and pearly teeth showed in a smile. The lithe arms reached up and the boy soared into the sky, trailing a comet’s tail of cloud.

Higher and higher the boy-god rose, bursting through the lowering clouds, sending them scudding away. And then when Branwen thought his hectic climb would never end, he turned suddenly upon himself like a diver and came plummeting down, trailing white fire, booming with thunder, hemmed by lightning, making for the black mouth of Merion’s cave.

Caradoc struck the mountain with a force that blasted Branwen off her feet again and sent her whirling like a leaf across the erupting face of the world.

I shall die! I shall surely die!

But even as she was sent careering down the mountain, she was aware that she still had her shield on her arm, and that a silvery cocoon of light had blossomed out from it—and that she was protected within its glittering shell.

Unhurt, she came crashing to the ground. She got dizzily to her feet, amazed to be alive. As the smoke and fume of Caradoc’s impact filtered away, Branwen saw that where the cave mouth had been, a great hole had been blasted in the mountainside—a huge dark chasm in which white lightning darted and stabbed at a moiling black whirlwind.

There was a noise like no noise she had ever heard: a ferocious roaring and screaming and howling that did not come from human throats.

Then she heard a voice crying out; and she knew the voice, although it was a thousand times louder than she had heard it before.

It was Merion’s voice, shaking the mountain.

“Begone, formless horror of the frozen north! You have no power here! The Shining Ones outmatch you! Brother Wind and Sister Stone banish you back to the pit where you were spawned!”

The mountain shuddered to its foundations, the noise dinning in Branwen’s head so that she felt as if her skull might crack open. She was only just able to keep her balance as rocks and boulders came hurtling down toward her, striking off the mystical shield, buffeting her from side to side.

And then when Branwen felt she could endure the noise and the chaos no more, the black whirlwind seemed to diminish and to cringe under the forks and darts of the lightning. It burst out of the mountain, shedding black threads as it went, racing away over Branwen’s head, drawing such a wind in its wake that it was all Branwen could do to stay on her feet as it fled over the forest and wilderness of Cyffin Tir and went wailing into the east until the dark evening swallowed it.

An uncanny silence came down over the land. A silence more profound than any Branwen had ever known. A silence that was like the yawning nothingness at the uttermost end of the world.

The gaping chasm was like a wound in the mountain, bleeding pulverized rock. But from the darkness two shapes emerged. A glorious boy made of silvery cloud and an ancient crone leaning on a gnarled stick.

Branwen heard a noise behind her. She knew that it must be her friends and followers approaching her, but she did not turn—her eyes were riveted on the two Shining Ones.

“It is done,” said Blodwedd, her voice astounded. “And we are alive to see it!”

“Branwen?” Rhodri’s voice. “What happened? Where is Asta?”

“Dead,” Branwen said. “She was our enemy. She brought Ragnar, but he is defeated and fled.”

“I see there is a great tale to tell here when time allows!” Dera declared.

“Wait for me,” Branwen said. “I shall not be long.” She began to make her way up the mountain to where the two gods were waiting.

Iwan called after her. “Branwen, don’t go up there! Remember what you were told about Caradoc!”

She turned and looked down at them. All of her companions were gathered there, looking up at her, anxious and bewildered and amazed.

She smiled. “They will not harm me. I must speak with them. Prepare the horses; we will be leaving very soon.”

It seemed a long climb up the mountain, but Branwen felt a renewed strength flowing through her veins as she clambered up toward the two gods. Strength and resolution and an unbreakable determination to hold to the course she had decided.

At last she was on a level with them: the blazing boy and the withered crone.

“You have done well, Warrior Child,” croaked Merion, striking her stick on the ground. “You have taken another step along the great path of your destiny.”

“I am set free by your faithfulness and devotion,” said Caradoc, and his voice was as gentle and sweet as his smiling face. “But now we have a new task for you, Warrior Child.”

“It must wait,” Branwen interrupted. “There is something I must do first.”

“It cannot wait, child!” growled Merion, her eyes darkening in her wrinkled face. “Your life belongs to the Shining Ones; our will is your only purpose.”

Branwen looked into Merion’s dreadful yellow eyes. “A friend is dead,” she said. “And I must honor his dying wish.”

Caradoc’s voice became suddenly harsher. “Do not seek to thwart our will, Warrior Child. It will go ill with you.”

Branwen looked at him, her heart steadfast. “Then you must act as you see fit,” she said. “Neither by coercion nor threats will you deflect me from the duty I have set myself. I will go to the court of Pengwern, and I will offer my services to the king of Powys.” Her voice became firmer. “And know this, Ancient Gods of Brython: if you seek to turn me from this course, I will only fight the harder to have my way.” She looked from one to the other. “To stop me, you will need to kill me.”

And so saying, she turned on her heel and made her way back down the mountain to where her companions were waiting.

Merion’s harsh voice followed her. “Know this, Warrior Child,” Merion called, grinding like an earthquake. “Try as you might, you cannot hide from your destiny!” The voice rose. “Go now, if headstrong fervor drives you, but you will return to us. You will not be able to help yourself! Remember the words of Rhiannon, Warrior Child:
You will run in a circle, Branwen ap Griffith, and I will be there!”

Heedless of Merion’s words, Branwen mounted the great bay destrier.

She is right. In time I will surely return to them, but not until my duty to Gavan is fulfilled. I will go to Pengwern. They will not stop me from having my will in this. I killed Skur and freed Caradoc from his prison. Weighed on the scales, they are deep in my debt. I shall walk the path of my destiny—but I shall do it in my own way; and any who try to stop me will know what it is to cross swords with Branwen ap Griffith, the Emerald Flame of Brython.

Branwen turned away from the mountain; and with her friends and companions about her, and with Fain flying above her head, she rode down through the forests and out into the wild lands of Cyffin Tir.

Also by Frewin Jones:

Warrior Princess
Destiny’s Path
The Faerie Path
The Lost Queen
The Seventh Daughter
The Immortal Realm
The Enchanted Quest

Copyright

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jones, Frewin.

The emerald flame / Frewin Jones. — 1st ed.

p. cm. — (Warrior princess; 3)

Summary: Branwen has accepted the role of Chosen One, and now, with a growing army including her half-owl, half-human friend Blodwedd and the dashing yet maddening Iwan, she must overcome terrifying odds if she is to succeed in saving Wales from the Saxon invaders.

ISBN 978-0-06-087149-9 (trade bdg.)

[1. Princesses—Fiction. 2. War—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction. 4. Saxons—Fiction. 5. Wales—History—To 1063—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.J71Em 2010 2010004604

[Fic]—dc22 CIP

10 11 12 13 14 LP/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1