The Silver Hand (33 page)

Gradually, the sounds behind us diminished as we outpaced our pursuers. When we came to a fording place, Bran led us back across the Modornn, and we continued our flight on the other side. We crossed the river twice more for good measure, and dawn found us far north of the stronghold. We stopped to listen, and heard nothing.

“I think they have turned back,” Cynan said. “We can rest now.”

But Bran would not hear of it. “Not yet,” he said and led us to a high heathered cliff rising to the east some distance away; there we could watch the glen while we rested. We sat in the heather or lay on the rocks and waited for strength to return.

“Well,” said Llew after a while, “must we pull it out of you? What happened back there?”

Cynan roused himself, “I wish you could have seen me,” he said. “I was brilliant.” He called to Rhoedd, “I was brilliant, was I not?”

“That you were, lord,” Rhoedd replied. “Truly.”

“Tell us your feat,” prodded Alun Tringad, “so that we can properly appreciate this brilliance of yours.”

“And then,” put in Drustwn, “we can laud your achievement properly.”

“Not that you need our help,” added Emyr. “You seem more than able yourself.”

Cynan drew himself up. “Listen to this,” he said, “and prepare to be amazed.”

“Get on with it!” cried Llew.

“Rhoedd and I went up to the caer together,” he began. “We walk easy—two wayfaring warriors, who knows the difference, hey?”

“Yes, yes,” said Alun, “we know all that. We saw you. Tell us what happened when you got inside.”

“Rhoedd and I went up to the caer together,” Cynan repeated firmly. “And here am I, thinking what I might say to the gate men to get us inside the fortress. We are walking along and I am thinking—”

“We know this!” complained Alun. “They opened the gates and let you in. Then what happened?”

Cynan ignored him. “We are walking along and I am thinking. I say to Rhoedd, ‘You know, Rhoedd, these men are used to lies. I suspect they are lied to from first to last by Meldron and his brood.'

“‘A most astute observation, Lord Cynan,' says Rhoedd to me. ‘Most astute.'”

The Ravens groaned, but Cynan ignored them and continued, “‘Therefore,' say I to Rhoedd, ‘I will tell them the truth. I will tell them exactly what has happened to Meldron, and they will be so astonished they will ask us to come in and join them at table, just so that they can hear the tale.' So that is what I did.

“‘We are walking to the gate, see, and we are close now, and they spy us. ‘Halt!' they call out from the wall. ‘Who are you? What is your business here?' And so I tell them: ‘I am Cynan ap Cynfarch and I have just come from Ynys Sci. I have word of your Lord Meldron.'”

“What did the gateman say?” asked Garanaw. The Ravens were warming to the tale.

“What does the gateman say?” Cynan chuckled. “He says,
‘Our
Lord Meldron?' So I say, ‘Man, are you telling me there is another Lord Meldron in this worlds-realm?' Did I not say it just like that, Rhoedd?”

“Just like that, lord,” Rhoedd affirmed. “Word for word.”

“Well, our man had to think about it for a moment, and then he calls for men—to help him think, I imagine. And we stand there bold as day, moving not so much as a hair. Then the gate opens and four of them come out to us. There is one with a great spreading mustache—”

“Glessi is his name,” offered Bran.

“That is true,” Cynan agreed. “Our Glessi frowns and smacks his chest and, ‘What is this about Meldron?' he says, and ‘Who are you anyway?' Not fettered by manners is our man. So I tell him I bring tidings from his lord, and he had no other choice than to welcome me properly. ‘What do you want?' he says.

“‘What do I want?' say I. ‘I want a cool drink and a hot meal and a place at the hearth for my bed—that is what I want.' He frowns some more—our Glessi is a powerful frowner—and he says, ‘Well, if you have come from Meldron, I suppose you had best come in.' And what do we do then, Rhoedd?”

“We march in, proud as you please,” Rhoedd answered brightly, relishing his part in the tale.

“Then what happened?” Llew asked.

“Well, they fetch the cups quick enough, and we drink and talk a while. ‘What is it like in Sci?' they ask, and so I tell them: ‘The weather is fine; the air is pleasant.' They say to me, ‘Glad we are to hear it. But what of Meldron?' I say to them: ‘Friends,' I say, ‘you are fortunate indeed to be where you are, and not where your lord is tonight.'

“‘How so?' they ask.

“‘I tell you the truth,' I say, ‘it is not good with Meldron in Sci. He has been attacked. Six of his ships have been wrecked and two stolen. Long he will be repairing even one of them to take him off that island.'”

“What do they say to that?” asked Niall.

“What do they say? They say, ‘Terrible! Most unfortunate!' What do I say? I say to them, ‘Aye, terrible it is. We escaped with our lives and came as soon as we could.'” Cynan laughed, and the Ravens laughed with him. “They thanked us for telling them, did they not, Rhoedd?”

“That they did, Lord Cynan. That they did.”

“Well, we eat our supper then, and drink some more—I make certain the cups keep moving, see—and all the time I am watching what they do and where they go. I tell them I have to pee, and Rhoedd and I go outside. We walk around a little, but it is dark by this time and I do not see very much. But I do see a storehouse near the hall, and it has a door that is chained. When I go back, I pull Glessi aside and say, ‘Meldron must have much treasure to fill so large a storehouse.'”

“You said that?” asked Bran.

“I did,” declared Cynan. “And our Glessi is careless in his cups; he makes bold to boast. ‘Treasure!' he cries. ‘It is nothing less than the Song Stones of Albion. Most rare and powerful, they are, and most valuable. Their foremost virtue is invincibility in battle.' He tells me this, and more besides. Well, I have only to wait until they are asleep; then Rhoedd and I leave the hearth, slip out to the storehouse and get ourselves inside. And there is the box: wooden it is and bound with iron bands and chains.”

“What did you do?” asked Drustwn.

“Tell him, Rhoedd.”

“Lord Cynan sent me to open the gate. He said, ‘Rhoedd, I fear I must make a great noise. We must be ready to fly.' So I went to the gate and opened it and came to rouse you.”

“I watch him from the door,” Cynan continued. “And when he has the gate open, I take up the box. It is heavy, yes—but I am thinking it is not as heavy as it should be. I get it up in my arms and I take it outside and I heave it up high and hurl it against the water trough in the yard. Oh! The noise!”

“And then?” Llew demanded. “What did you see?”

“I see that the box has not broken. I must throw it again. So up it comes and down it goes, and—
crash!
—the box smashes into pieces. And here am I, on hands and knees, pawing through the splinters. And what do I find?”

“What
do
you find?” said Alun impatiently. “Get on with it, man.”

But Cynan was not to be rushed. “I am looking for the Singing Stones. I am looking, but I am not seeing them. What am I seeing?”

“Cynan!” cried Llew. “Spit it out!”

“I am seeing sand,” Cynan announced. “Nothing but clay and sand from the river bank—that is what I am seeing! The stones were not in the box. Here! See for yourself.” I heard a movement and the light patter of sand poured upon stone.

“This is what was in the box?” Llew asked.

“Nothing else,” Cynan assured him.

Llew took my hand and stretched it out, palm up. He filled my hand with a dry, gravelly substance. I lifted it to my face, sniffed it. It smelled of wood and soil. I shook it from my hand and touched a fingertip to my tongue: mud.

“That is my tale,” Cynan concluded. “I would that it had a better end to it, but there it is.”

“Perhaps they are hidden somewhere else,” suggested Bran.

“No,” I told him. “We will not find the stones at Caer Modornn. Let us return to the ships and go home.”

“We cannot go back the way we came,” said Llew. “We will have to go around the caer to the west.”

“All the better,” I said. “We will spy out the land and see how Prydain fares under Meldron's reign.”

We bent our way west, away from the river and, once we were out of sight of the caer, we turned south and soon came to a settlement— although it was in truth no more than a handful of miserable mud-and-twig huts beside the turgid trickle of a shallow stream. Yet more than seventy people lived in the close-cluster of stinking hovels— Mertani clansmen whose king and nobles had been conquered and killed. Seventy ill-clothed and underfed wretches. In the guise of offering them sustenance, Meldron had made them slaves.

A starving dog barked as we entered the holding, alerting the inhabitants who emerged from the huts as we came near. At the yapping of the dog, my inner vision kindled, and I saw the place we had come to. Half-naked children, barefoot and big-eyed, lurked behind their slump-shouldered parents. Everyone wore the grim, hollow look of people whose lives have become a burden they can no longer bear.

Cynan addressed the chief of the holding, a man named Ognw, who told how they were forced to work the fields but were denied the proceeds of their labor. “Meldron takes it all,” he complained, the people muttering darkly behind him. “He gives us the leavings. Nothing more.”

“Yet you can hunt in the woods,” Bran pointed out. “There is no need to go hungry.”

“Oh, aye, we are allowed to hunt,” Ognw replied bitterly, “but we have no spears or knives.”

“Why?” asked Cynan.

“Weapons are forbidden to us,” the chief muttered. “Have you ever tried to bring down a stag with nothing but your two bare hands? Or a wild pig?”

“We get no meat,” one of the onlookers volunteered. “We get only moldy grain and sour curds.”

A man with one eye described how the king sent warriors to seize the harvest even as it was gathered. “They say we will be given all the grain we need for the asking,” the man said, scoffing. “We ask-—oh, yes, we ask. But we receive spit.” He spat on the ground.

“Two of our kinsmen went to the king for meat,” Ognw added. “Three days later their bodies were brought to us for burial. They told us our kinsmen had been attacked by a wild animal.”

“There was no wild animal,” the one-eyed man said, “only Meldron.”

“Meldron takes everything for himself,” a woman told us. “He takes it all, and gives nothing back.”

We left them and continued our circuit of the land. The nearer to Caer Modornn we came, the closer together the settlements became. At each holding we saw the same appalling hardship and squalor, and heard a similar tale of distress: the king's demands, the king's desires, the king's deceits fueled their suffering. Meldron had turned the wide, generous Vale of Modornn into the Vale of Misery. The people groaned under the weight of their affliction.

As we listened to their desperate pleas, it became abundantly clear to me how Meldron had fared so well in his dealings with the kings of Llogres. Those weaker than himself he attacked; the stronger kings he wooed and won with lavish gifts and overgenerous alliances and trade agreements. All this, to the hurt of the people.

Even the Llwyddi, Meldron's clansmen—and my own!—did not escape the torment of their cruel lord. The Llwyddi fared no better than the cattle they herded in the wooded hills. With my inward eye, I saw my own blood kin, and I no longer knew them!

“Tell us our crime,” demanded one of the men, a kinsman who had served Meldryn Mawr faithfully and had endured the horror of Nudd and the privations of Findargad. “Tell us what we have done to deserve this. Our cattle are treated better than we are—and if anyone dare touch them he must answer to Meldron.”

A sunken-cheeked woman with a naked, sickly babe clinging to her breast stretched a hand toward us. “Please, lord, help us. We are dying here.”

Cynan turned to Llew. “Well, will you give the order, brother, or will I?”

“I will do it,” Llew replied, “and gladly.”

Llew turned to the Ravens. “Drustwn, Emyr, Alun,” he called, “bring the cattle here. They will be slaughtered for meat. Garanaw and Niall, bring wood and prepare a fire.” Then he told the people, “Today you will feast until you can hold no more.”

But the people were horrified. “No!” they shrieked. “If Meldron finds out, he will kill us!”

“Meldron will not find out,” Cynan assured them. “He is gone and will not soon return. And when he does you can tell him that Llew and Cynan killed the cattle to spite him.”

The cattle were gathered in from the hills; the fire was kindled. Three cows were slaughtered, and the rest of the herd was driven to the surrounding settlements. At each place, cattle were killed to feed the people. Though they welcomed the meat, they still feared Meldron's wrath, and that cast a shadow of gloom over the feasting.

“We should not linger here any longer,” Bran warned. “We have done all we can for them.”

“Yet I would do more,” Llew said. He turned to me. “Can we take them with us, do you think?”

“If they will come. But I do not think they will leave their hovels.”

Cynan disputed this, saying, “Not leave? If you were slave to Meldron would you stay even a moment longer if someone offered you freedom?”

“Offer then,” I replied.

This Cynan and Llew did; they made the offer of freedom to any and all who would take it. None would join us, however; all preferred to stay in their huts, wretched though they were—and they were loathly indeed. And though we argued long, we could not persuade them that we would not turn against them as Meldron had done. We could not make them see that it was life we offered, not the living death they knew.