Chapter Eight Wayland
Chapter Eight
Wayland
Wayland awoke in darkness punctuated by multicolored glimmers of colored light. For a long, nebulous moment, he had utterly no idea where he was. Then the shimmers grew sharp, piercing his skull with blinding intensity.
Not light. Claws.
“Ow!” He jerked upright—or tried to. Smothering weight wrapped around his head and flopped over his neck. He batted at the mass in panic, only half relieved when he felt smooth, hot scales. A low hum vibrated his face.
Hog.
The pain raking his hairline fluctuated as the burdensome draig kneaded at his skin with apparent pleasure. Wayland shoved ineffectually at the creature before letting his arms fall back onto the bed.
Of course—he was deep inside a mountain, being harassed by a toddler draigling who’d seemingly taken a shine to him.
“How did you even get in here?” he grumbled. “I know I locked that door.”
Hog purred louder, massaging his scalp with her needlelike talons.
“Make yourself useful, at least.” He sighed. “I can’t see for shite in here.”
Hog chirruped in apparent umbrage.
“Light some torches. Please?”
She launched herself off his head. Red-gold sparks showered along the far wall, igniting the tapers embedded in the stone.
Wayland sat up in bed as the little draig hurtled back to collide with his bare chest before curling herself possessively around his abdomen.
He cradled her form in surrender. She was a strange combination of hard muscle and sleek scales and soft baby fat. He didn’t totally despise holding her.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked helplessly. “Don’t you already have a mother?”
Hog rolled onto her back, exposing her velvet underbelly and giving him a sly look. He gently stroked her tummy before groaning at his own weakness and plopping her unceremoniously onto the floor.
“I’m getting dressed now, you leech.”
Wayland made a face at the rumpled, dirty trousers and stinking shirt he’d traveled in from Emain Ablach. But he had nothing else to wear. He pulled on the breeches with a grimace but tossed the shirt onto the fire now blazing in the hearth.
The Cnoc’s caverns were kept pleasantly warm. And no one—including himself—needed the stench he’d been carrying with him for weeks.
Wayland held out an arm. “Shall we?”
The chubby little dragan gave three jolting lollops of her stubby wings to get herself airborne before landing on his shoulder with a thump. He shrugged to redistribute her weight, then opened the door and strode out into the Cnoc.
Only to collide squarely with the person standing directly outside his door.
Wayland cursed, jerking back even as his stumbling steps tangled his legs with the stranger’s.
He caught a glimpse of fire-red hair and warm brown skin.
Laoise? But Laoise barely reached his chest—this figure easily cleared his shoulders.
Wayland lost his balance completely, staggering forward and toppling against the other person.
They swayed precipitously in the moment before he caught them both with his hands splayed on the wall.
“Gods alive!” Wayland spat out. “Couldn’t you have knocked?”
He looked down.
The young man caged between his braced arms was breathing unevenly, his lips parted in surprise.
The eyes he lifted to Wayland’s face were brown as bark, shot through with filaments of gold from the torchlight and framed in lush auburn lashes.
Half his head was shaven; the other half sported sleek scarlet hair spilling over one side of his face.
He was a few inches shorter than Wayland, and sparer—his sleeveless mantle displayed the sinewed cut of arms ribboned with lean muscle.
He huffed an awkward laugh, and Wayland tasted the other man’s breath on his own lips—their near fall had brought them mere inches apart.
“I was about to.” His voice was deeper than Wayland had expected it to be. His dark eyes drifted from Wayland’s face to his bare chest, then back up.
“Oh.” Wayland pushed back from the wall, putting distance between himself and the stranger. He fought the urge to cross his arms over his naked chest, feeling strangely exposed. “Dare I ask why?”
“Someone,” the red-haired man said pointedly as he lifted a leather-gauntleted fist toward Wayland’s shoulder, “isn’t supposed to go sneaking around bothering strangers.”
Hog mewled, then launched herself off Wayland’s shoulder onto the newcomer’s raised hand.
“Kiss?” The draigling did not so much ask as demand, thrusting her fang-rimmed mouth at the man’s jaw. The motion ruffled his length of crimson hair, and he readjusted the locks back in place over his cheekbone, the gesture self-conscious but practiced.
“We haven’t been introduced,” he said as he submitted to Hog’s kisses. “I’m Idris.”
Of course. Laoise’s brother. They did look like siblings—the same smooth brown skin, the same soft, sculpted features.
Their eyes were different—Laoise’s a supernatural amber, like embers cooling in a grate, while Idris’s were opaque brown.
So, too, was their hair—Laoise kept her springy curls cropped close to her head, while Idris wore his length of scarlet hair assiduously curved over one eyebrow and cheek, kissing around his jawline before pooling over his chest.
“And I’m Wayland.” He fought the urge to reach out and slip the other man’s hair behind his ear. The phantom slide of those glossy tresses between his fingertips made Wayland shiver. He shoved his hand in his pocket. “It was no intrusion.”
Idris grinned, a sideways flash of humor that was gone almost before it appeared. “Is that why you’re not wearing a shirt?”
Wayland flushed, an unexpected flare of heat climbing from his collarbone toward his jaw. He barked a laugh, half in surprise and half in awe.
When was the last time someone had made him blush? He had no earthly idea.
“I meant the draig. She’s sweet… when she’s not trying to rip my scalp off.
” Wayland’s mouth stretched with the beginnings of a smile.
He had never been one to let flirtation go ignored—historically he could give just as good as he got.
“But if you enjoyed this chance encounter, I will happily answer my door half naked and pin you against the nearest wall anytime you stop by.”
Idris did not blush so much as set himself on fire.
Red burned his throat, blazed across his cheeks, and rouged the tip of his visible ear.
He ducked his head, his glossy tresses falling farther over his face.
When he looked back up, he had composed himself—only the slightest hint of red lurked above the collar of his tunic.
“I came to fetch you,” he said with all the gravity he could muster. “Everyone else is awake. And they’ve all begun to plan.”
As different as the caverns were from Emain Ablach—the silver-hued, wave-strewn, blue-sky island where he’d spent the entirety of his life—Wayland did not dislike them.
Their glossy curves and muted kaleidoscope glow reminded him a little of the Year’s prison beneath the Silver Isle.
But there was something dislocating about being underground—as though he was cut off from some vital part of himself.
He had felt the same loss when they traveled inland from the coast—no crash of waves or cries of gulls or salt on the air.
He had never expected to mourn the winter sea. But nor had he expected many of the events he had recently undergone.
The caverns undulated downward. Hog careened ahead of Idris and Wayland, illuminating the caves with sparks of red fire until sunspots danced across Wayland’s vision.
Soon, he heard the sound of rushing water somewhere nearby.
The coursing sensation curling around his bones as his innate magic awoke was both homecoming and affliction.
Instinctively, his fingers grazed his throat, where for so many years a thick, heavy collar had choked him.
But it was, of course, gone—Wayland had finally taken his power back from the man who had stolen it.
His king. His bane.
His father.
Set me free. Wayland inhaled deeply, remembering the last words he had spoken to the man who had helped create him. Gavida had shuddered, in those final moments, even as his precious isle slid away into the hungry sea. Let me go, as myself.
The smith-king’s eyes, where they rested upon his only son and heir, had been full of fear.
Not of the sword point resting over his ancient, anguished heart, but of an older, greater horror.
He had not, in the end, been afraid of his own death.
Only feared the method by which he would be dispatched.
“Where are you taking me?” Wayland asked Idris, forcing away his jumbled memories of the Longest Night.
Idris glanced over his shoulder, Hog’s patchwork flames turning his eyes molten. “Scared, Wayland?”
The familiar use of his first name inexplicably jolted Wayland.
Plenty of people called him by his first name—he had always hated formalities such as sire or prionsa.
Those were roles—personas—he’d been forced into.
Perhaps that was what made his name on Idris’s tongue sound so strange.
This other man knew him only by how he had introduced himself.
It felt like resurrection.
“Not in the least,” Wayland responded easily. “Strange men leading me half dressed into unknown places is one of my favorite pastimes.”
Idris’s gaze dropped unconsciously to Wayland’s bare chest before leaping to his face. Wayland’s smile crept wider as another flush teased the man’s throat. “Laoise warned me that you would try to flirt.”
“Try?” Wayland laughed. “She underestimates my resolve. I’m not trying. I am flirting with you.”
Idris looked forward again, hiding his expression behind his spill of hair. “You slept later than the rest. The question of the nemeton was broached. Irian especially wished to see it. But it is a bit of a hike.”
The nemeton. Laoise had referred to the grove of flaming trees growing at the base of the sinkhole.
Wayland’s thoughts flew to the Grove of Gold—the sacred ring of nine ancient apple trees crowning Emain Ablach.
A spear of sorrow pierced him, sharp and unexpected.
The grove was lost now—he had witnessed the wishing trees being consumed in columns of silver fire before the plunging island devoured them.
He had never believed himself particularly attached to the grove.
It had simply been there, existing, for all his life.
But now the knowledge of its destruction carved a hole in his chest—another negative space he felt suddenly unsure how to fill.
“What do you call it?”
“Call it?”
“Many years ago, my king father pithily named our nemeton the Grove of Gold.”
“Let me guess,” Idris said. “The trees were golden.”
Wayland laughed. “You’re a sharp one.”
“When Blodwen first discovered the grove, we had no name for it at all.” Idris shrugged. “Only after Laoise began venturing out into Tír na nóg and Annwyn, collecting stories and books, did we discover the term nemeton.”
“If it is as impressive as Laoise says, perhaps it deserves an honorific.”
“Perhaps.” Idris caught Hog—doing flaming loop-de-loops dangerously close to his long hair—by one stubby leg and tugged her onto his shoulder. “Or perhaps not. What is the point of naming something that is dying? Just another piece of it to lose when the time finally comes.”
His words struck Wayland like a blow to the chest. The cavern abruptly opened outward.
A rill of frigid wind winnowed through the darkness of the cave, and where it gusted along the walls the minerals pulsed brighter: jasper and peridot and tourmaline glittering like colorful stars.
A moment later, red-gold light exploded on Wayland’s face.
Inside the caverns, he had lost his sense of time. It was late morning, by the angled scrape of sunlight over the high, narrow lip of the impossibly deep sinkhole punched into the mountainside. Beyond, pale clouds scalloped the blue. Below…
Wayland had grown up with the Grove of Gold.
As a child he had hidden from infuriated tutors among its gnarled, twisting boughs.
As a teenager he had braided garlands for curious paramours from its fragrant blossoms. As an adult he had plucked, then tasted, its devious, tempting fruit, swiftly earning punishment for his heart’s desire.
A delicious feast resulting in a total loss of appetite; a day of perfect weather in exchange for one horrendous storm.
Such proximity ought to have made him immune to the wonders of a mystical grove of magical trees.
Laoise and Idris’s nemeton cured him of that assumption with swift and vexing totality.
The glade was incredible. Blown glass trees molded into fantastical shapes; veins of fire coursing beneath their transparent boughs; roots and branches etched with seams of living gold.
Leaves crafted from memories of bonfires; burning blossoms with molten petals.
“Gods alive,” Wayland murmured. “It’s… unbelievable.”
When he finally managed to tear his eyes away from the flaming trees, Idris was watching him with an expression he could not read—curiosity, with a hint of admiration. Or was that disdain?
“Come,” said Idris. “They’re this way.”