The Moonshawl: A Wraeththu Mythos Novel (35 page)

Medoc smiled sadly. ‘I remember
Meilyr saying to me once, “Don’t become like the old cat who dozes by the fire,
cousin. Remember the dog can leap on his back and break his spine.”

‘And I replied, “A cat is not a
dog. He uses stealth rather than brute force. That is his natural way. He might
appear to be asleep by the fire, but he is watching.”

‘But while I was proud of these
words, Meilyr wasn’t impressed. He insisted that Mossamber didn’t want Kinnard
to have a son and said to me, “If you refuse to believe this, you’re a fool. He
wants all of us to suffer as he does, as Peredur did. And don’t question me,
Medoc, I
know
this, as strongly as if Mossamber had told me himself.”’

Medoc gestured with both hands
resignedly. ‘He was fired up, but then he’d always been of the fiery kind. I
couldn’t ignore him, because all our hara respected his power and his honesty.
So, I offered a compromise. I asked hara with the strongest psychic talents to observe
what they could of the Whitemanes. I wanted to find more evidence.’

‘And was this plan successful?’
I asked.

Medoc shook his head. ‘Not
really. My spies picked up shivers of energy that felt vaguely threatening, but
obtained nothing definite. The Domain had strong wards around it, blocking
intrusion on any level. Perhaps the fact they’d installed these defences was
evidence enough of bad intention, but I couldn’t be sure. As the days went on,
and nothing happened that was worse than peculiar sounds and vague feelings of
threat, I dared to think that perhaps all Mossamber was capable of was a
grumbling sky, the symbol of his displeasure.’ Medoc fell silent.

‘That wasn’t true though, was
it?’ I said, to encourage him.

He stared at me for some moments.
‘Ysobi, to this day, I can’t say for sure who or what was behind what happened.
I can only relay what I experienced. On the day that Kinnard’s harling began to
break from his pearl, the sun reappeared. Everyhar took this as auspicious. I
wanted to as well, but couldn’t feel reassured. If anything, I felt worse than
before: utterly unsafe, unable to relax.’

A stillness came into that room,
then, and I too could feel how Medoc had felt, all those years ago.

‘The house creaked,’ he
murmured. ‘There were crackings in the timber all around us. Perhaps the
ancient wood was simply drying out from the constant downpours, but it didn’t
feel that way. The Mynd
shuddered
. There were smells, as of burning, but
also fires that had been dampened and the smoke gone sour.’ Medoc shivered.
‘The light inside the house went
green,
although the sun shone strongly
outside. I can remember feeling at one point as if the whole building was under
water, and had taken us with it. It was so hard to breathe it was like gulping dark
water. I wondered if we were still alive. Can you imagine that?’

‘Yes,’ I said softly, and in my
mind, a minnow of thought:
Mossamber drowned him. That’s how Peredur died.

Medoc now lay back in his seat,
blinking at the ceiling, his hands resting on the chair arms. ‘As evening came
on we were drawn like ghosts ourselves to the upper room, the bedroom where the
pearl lay. Kinnard, Yvainte, our hienama Arynne, all the cousins... They
gathered around the pearl. They sang to it. Within each of them was the single,
focused desire to shower this emerging child with their love, with their fierce
drive to protect it. I never reached them to add my voice and will to theirs.’

‘Why not?’ I asked, when I
sensed him pausing again.

He frowned, tapping the tips of
his fingers together, spoke slowly. ‘I remember climbing the stairs, or trying
to, but my limbs ached and it was difficult to take the steps. Around me, the
Mynd groaned and rasped like the timbers of a ship. The stairs seemed to rock
beneath my feet as if we were at sea. I kept thinking if only the pearl would
break, it would be over. The harling would be safely in the world, and the
shining power of this new, purely-created being must surely eclipse all shadows
of the past.

‘But before I reached the room,
the din started up.

‘Out in the yard, the dogs
started to bark and howl. I could hear the horses screaming, as if on fire,
kicking at their stalls. I heard all the chickens squawking desperately. Later,
hara told me they had tried frantically to fly, feathers falling from them in a
cloud. They told me cats had streaked hissing from the house and run to the
forest.’ Medoc paused again, and I could feel his deep reluctance to relive
these moments. He looked me in the eye. ‘And beneath the terror of the animals,
there was another sound: a moan, rising in timbre that sounded neither human
nor harish, nor from any natural creature. I had heard nothing like it – ever.

‘For some moments, I was
paralysed. I clung to the banister, which shook beneath my hands, as if an
earthquake convulsed the land. I could hear this
loathsome
voice, in my
head, rather than my ears. There were no clear words exactly, just a series of terrible
sounds like... like out of tune musical instruments and fragile things
smashing. I can describe it no other way, yet even that doesn’t really convey
what I heard. But the sentiment within those sounds had the clarity of polished
glass.

‘This is what it told me: We
would never thrive in Meadow Mynd and our offspring would perish. We were
traitors, becoming fat on the suffering of others. If we wished to save
ourselves, we must leave the house, burn it down, so its timbers would join
with the ashes of those who had been cremated in its fields. It would never
belong to us, nor to anyhar. If we defied this curse, we’d bring death upon our
hara, starting with he who had just been born.’

Medoc shuddered. ‘Oh, it was
more, far more, than that, every atom of hatred and cruelty you could imagine. That
terrible wordless voice screamed at me, and I knew the essence of it meant
simply, “Get out ! Get out!” I hung half dead upon the banister, the only sure
thing in my existence for those moments. Blackness closed in around me until I
could no longer see. It was like no blackness you can imagine, for even with your
eyes closed there are spots of colour or movement before the mind’s eye. This
was total,
dense
blackness. Dead. I thought then that was my curse – I
had been blinded as Peredur had been. I couldn’t even save myself, run out of
that house, because I didn’t know where to turn and the stairs were writhing
beneath my knees.’

Medoc rested his head upon his
hands for a moment.

‘You can take a rest,’ I said
gently. ‘Medoc... please...’

He looked up at me, and his eyes
were bloodshot. Now that he’d started I could see he was unable to stop. ‘I
didn’t see what manifested in that upper room, but heard about it from Yvainte
later. He said that as the pearl broke, the light in the room became dim,
almost purple in colour. This happened quickly, yet seemed to take a century. A
shadowy shape gradually formed, so immense it had to crouch with its shoulders
pressed against the ceiling, and its arms spread out to the corners of the room
like the branches of a dead tree. It was a terrifying spectre, thin and gaunt,
writhing within the space too small for it.’

Now Medoc pulled back his lips
in a snarl.  ‘Think about it, Ysobi. That vision, that
horror
, was the
first thing that Wyva har Wyvachi saw in this world. The first sound he heard
was that foul cacophony. And yet, even with that memory, which I don’t believe
has ever left him, he chooses to remain at Meadow Mynd. And why? Because of his
hostling. Because Kinnard drummed into him from day one that he must fight.’

‘What happened in that room?’ I
asked, unnerved by the ferocity of Medoc’s expression. ‘How did it end?’

Medoc sighed raggedly, and the
fierce glow faded from his eyes. ‘Yvainte told me that all he’d been able to do
was fall to the floor and huddle into a ball. He’d covered his head with his arms.
The hienama – Arynne – had been thrown against the wall and lay slumped against
it. The cousins had been similarly tossed aside, and were barely conscious.
Yvainte heard them whimpering. But Kinnard?’ Medoc closed his eyes for a moment.
‘Oh my brother, my brother... After laying eyes on that
thing
, Yvainte
and everyhar else in that room – but for Kinnard and the harling – had been
blinded as I had been. But Kinnard... he roared his fury, picked up the
harling, and ran from the room with it. He must’ve passed me on the stairs, but
I didn’t see him. I couldn’t see anything.’

‘How long... how long did it
last?’ I asked.

Medoc drew in a breath. ‘I
believe we were held in that blindness for perhaps two or three minutes, but it
felt like an eternity. Without light. When Yvainte could see again, the
apparition had vanished. But odd shadows remained.’

For me too, listening to his
ghastly tale, the room around me had become weirdly shadowed. I found it hard
to draw breath, felt disorientated. ‘Medoc,’ I said, with difficulty, ‘what they
saw in that room... was it Peredur?’

Medoc grimaced. ‘That was the
first thing I asked Yvainte,’ he said. ‘But he couldn’t say for sure. It did have
holes for eyes, but then its mouth was also a gaping black maw. The rest was
shadow.’

‘Do
you
believe it was
Peredur?’ I asked.

Medoc shrugged. ‘It was partly
him, I think. But more than that.
She
was in it.’

‘She?’

‘Vivi,’ he snarled. ‘I could
smell
her. She had never left us. If Mossamber hated and resented the Wyvachi, she
detested us and craved vengeance.’

I sat up straight. ‘So, what’s
happening now... you think it’s her too?

Medoc shook his head. ‘Not
exactly. I think the spectre of Meadow Mynd is Peredur, Vivi, and perhaps all
the others combined. A maelstrom of pain that has survived like a wasp’s nest
in the eaves of that house.’

‘Including your mother?’ I asked
carefully.

Medoc glanced at me. ‘No, not
her. She wouldn’t. Neither would Vere. Dehara bless them – they were gone. And
I’m glad of it.’

‘So Kinnard ran with Wyva and
sought aid from the ethers,’ I said. ‘And that’s how the moonshawl came to be.’

‘Yes. It was Kinnard’s belief,
his
will
, that protected Wyva. I’m not so sure about the shawl itself –
that was merely a symbol of Kinnard’s potency.’

‘Yet it protects the Wyvachi
harlings to this day,’ I said, ‘and Kinnard is long gone.’

‘Such is the power of faith,’
Medoc said. ‘But now...? I think it’s too old and has lost its power. The
thirst for revenge is gaining strength. I could feel it when I visited. The
years have not diminished its craving.’

I hated to keep asking
questions, because of Medoc’s obvious pain, but knew I must. ‘The shawl... I
assume Kinnard had it made, that it wasn’t just given to him by a spirit?’

Medoc nodded. ‘Yes. The next day
he visited somehar in the town who had a gift for such things. He demanded that
har work day and night to create the shawl as quickly as possible. But... as I
said, that was just his symbol. The
real
shawl was his ferocious will.’ He
stared at me. ‘If your friend Rinawne has any sense at all, he’ll take his son
and leave that blighted place, because it’s clear that Wyva won’t do so. You
must tell him this. Don’t take any risks with a young life.’

I nodded slowly. ‘I’ll tell him
all you said.’

‘That answer isn’t as clever as
you think,’ Medoc said harshly. ‘You think you can fight it, don’t you?’

I held his gaze. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘That delusion might be deadly.’

‘Medoc, I’m no proud fool. I
know my limits, but I really don’t think this is beyond them. I’m not taking it
lightly, believe me, and I’m aware of the strength of... whatever’s there...
but that land has to be cleansed. You must know that.’ I paused. ‘Would you
prefer to stop here, or can you tell me what happened to Kinnard and Yvainte?’

Medoc drew in his breath. ‘If
I’m to relive this, I’d rather get it all out of the way tonight. I’ll tell
you. The truth is, though, I didn’t witness their fates firsthand. This was because
before morning I fled the Mynd, taking my hara with me – our cousins and others
who decided to heed the warning. As we left, Kinnard told us not to come back.
He would fight alone. Only a lunatic would have stayed, in my opinion, but
Kinnard was always stubborn. He saw the curse as a challenge to his authority.’

Medoc sighed, ran his hands
through his hair. ‘Over the years, and once we’d established ourselves here at
Harrow’s, we sought reunion with Kinnard, but it never came to anything. However,
whatever he’d done had been effective: Wyva lived and thrived. Kinnard had
driven that malevolent force underground again and undoubtedly thought I was a
coward to have run from it. He had fought and won, while I had abandoned him.’

‘And yet... he died,’ I said.
‘How did it happen?’

Medoc pulled a sour face. ‘Well,
you have to appreciate that, even though our domains weren’t that far apart,
those of us at Harrow’s never heard the full story about anything. We did learn
that after a couple of years Kinnard tried to mend things with the Whitemanes,
simply because the hostility was an inconvenience at times. Neither did he want
the local hara to feel torn. You see, Kinnard and I had both felt very strongly
we should be fair leaders – not tyrants, not some grasping throwback to human
history. We were Wraeththu – above all that. I know Mossamber shared that ideal
and most likely still does. But he couldn’t bring himself to mend the hurt, no
doubt because of his own pain. He didn’t murder Kinnard and Yvainte, if that’s
what you’re thinking.’

‘I’ve never thought that,’ I
said.  

Medoc groaned, rubbed his face.
‘Now, I wish I’d done more to keep in contact with Kinnard, but after several
rebukes I stopped trying. Yvainte died first – poisoned. Yes, you heard that
right: a
har
– poisoned. They said it was something picked up from the
land, as if the Wyvachi lived in an area where humans might once have hidden or
used weapons that could kill like that. They didn’t.’