Chapter 30
THIRTY
The otherfolk remain highly discerning.
In recent times in particular,
it is only very rare individuals
who have drawn their attention.
Of Bwystfilod and Ysbrydion,
Rowynn gan Dafydd
THIRTY
There was a dull tapping against the westernmost window of Osian’s bedchamber as Meilyr returned inside, having helped the prince prepare for a morning bath.
It was a large grey-brown moth, beating itself against the inside of the glass. He unlatched the window and ushered it carefully out, to fly haphazardly to freedom.
The mist moved over the mountains, steady and deliberate. He rested against the arched sill for a moment, feeling closer to Cyngalon than he had in a very long time, there in the prince’s rooms in Eascild Castle.
It was the stories, the wind from the hills. The breathing of life into parts of himself he had tied off so tightly long ago, to stop from bleeding.
From the subsiding drizzle, a starling landed directly onto the sill before him and looked at him with large, perfectly black eyes.
He forgot to breathe. The starling hopped about, holding his gaze – chirruped and dived from the window, calling loudly as it sailed towards the gardens.
Meilyr.
The voice was so clear he started, clutching at his chest for something not there. It was as though the wind and the starling had snatched the thread of his heart, pulling him in a way he recognised, like a call to return home from across the fields as the sun set.
He ran to the parlour and almost into Osian, dripping in his robe. ‘My Prince, there is something I – might I gather something from the gardens?’
Osian was mildly dumbfounded. ‘Of course. Please take Pedr with you.’
‘I will return immediately, I – please, stay here.’
He did not want to leave Osian, but could not risk ignoring this.
That familiar voice. The starling. This feeling, wrapped around his entire chest.
By the time he reached the gardens, the sensation had ebbed.
He stood still until sound lost all touches of humanity, became birdsong and bees, the hush of leaves.
He did not want little stones beneath his boots.
He wanted grass that he could dig his toes into and to free himself from the cage of his body.
Exactly as he had done as a child, whenever the world grew too loud.
‘Highness?’ Pedr asked gently.
Meilyr shut his eyes, pretending for a breath longer.
‘Forgive me,’ he began. But then a rustle of wings brought a starling onto the hedge beside his head, where it looked at him and whistled. Darted away, deeper into the grounds.
The wind followed, brushing him with the clean summer scent of life.
‘That was a starling?’ Pedr half asked.
‘Yes. Yes, it was.’
His feet moved before it mattered if it was wise or dangerous to listen. He wound his way briskly through the criss-cross of well-tended hedges, trying not to run.
The starling reappeared, hopping from one branch to another before diving away, singing. Meilyr’s tunic clung under his arms in the humidity, but on and on the starling led, disappearing only to reappear, merrily directing his pursuit like a game. So wild, he laughed – did run, Pedr keeping pace.
Until the starling led him out into a small clearing next to Ena’s Folly, and dived beyond the low wall of the gardens, towards the sea.
Meilyr slowed, disappointment unfurling. Until he spotted the russet dapple amidst the henbane in the tended verge beneath the rowan tree, and the glimmer of eyes in the dim.
‘Highness!’ Pedr emerged from the hedges as Meilyr spun to meet them, and they collided into each other.
‘Pedr, sorry!’
‘Forgive me—’
‘No, it’s fine, could I have a moment? I want to pick some golden henbane, there by the rowan. There is some brandy mint on the other side of that terrace you could get for me? Please, they will help His Majesty’s recovery.’
Pedr struggled. ‘Highness, after everything—’
‘There is no one else here, please.’
They wet their lips, surveying the grounds, warring with trust and duty.
‘I will be here.’ Meilyr pointed, backing up across shorn grass. ‘And the mint there will be very useful. Thank you, Pedr.’
It was wrong to string them along, but he needed to be alone.
By the time he knelt by the henbane, Pedr had fought to a decision and swiftly moved out of sight as though an instant was all Meilyr would have.
He faced the undergrowth, dropped his voice and said in his native Cyngaleg, ‘Surprise guests often find themselves far from safe homes.’
Eyes opened in the shadows, unveiling the amber-hewn creature of soft, brilliant fur. Lying serenely, waiting for him.
‘How would such guests come to be here, I wonder?’ Meilyr asked.
The fox said, ‘This is your song. You called for me.’
Their voice was leaflitter over bones.
‘I did?’
‘You did.’
Meilyr sifted through memories. He had assumed himself another world away from the dealings of spirits and otherfolk – the world of the ysbrydion, and the Tylwyth Teg. Foolishly, it would seem. ‘I am afraid I do not remember summoning surprise guests.’
‘Human recollection is surface-deep, at best.’
A memory stirred.
It was not simply that the fox lay in the dark of the dappled shade. Their fur was mottled, fierce as flame in patches but black as night in others. A unique, unmistakeable pattern that left him without doubt.
He forgot to keep his address vague. ‘It was you! It was you, that night in the forest.’
The night his parents had died.
From fire and blood and death, to trees and cold and rain. The flash of those eyes – the embers of that tail, guiding him to the boy who would lead him to Idwal, and Lowri, and Celyn.
‘It was you.’
There was no admittance, and no denial, in the creature’s presence. Merely those deep golden eyes, gleaming as close to amusement as could be imagined on a fox.
‘What can I do for you?’ Meilyr asked, not in the way he had asked every patron of the apothecary, but in the way someone might pledge their soul, willingly, for the asking.
‘You called me, child of the wildest skies. What can I do for you?’
The absurdity of everything, on the back of the memory of that night, loosed a pained laugh from his chest. ‘My mother always warned me, a spirit never gives without seeking something in return.’
‘Your mother knew it well. But no bargain is struck without the words.’
‘I already owe you my life,’ Meilyr said. ‘Have you come to collect, at last?’
‘There is no debt that binds you, save that which you bind to yourself. Your choices have always been your own.’
Spirit-riddles. He tried to set them aside for now. ‘Someone is here, in this castle, killing people. Killing them with the weaving blood.’
‘A bad business.’
‘You do not approve?’
‘Do you?’ the spirit asked.
Meilyr allowed himself to assess it more honestly than ever before. ‘Some of these people, perhaps they deserve punishment. But not like this.’
‘Are you certain? It was blood that made us, and blood will out.’
The wind crested over the wall, filling his senses with salt, golden henbane and rowan. The subtle tang of fox’s tears.
‘Can you tell me who is behind it? Who is seeking revenge?’
‘I could. If I do, what will you do?’
Tell Osian, he thought.
But could he? How would he explain this?
He had no hope of stopping the gwehydd himself, but – dreigiau help him – he had the beginnings of a vested belief that Osian would know what to do.
The fox turned away.
‘Wait,’ Meilyr started.
‘We will meet again, before this is finished,’ they said. ‘Remember thy past with help from us all. Have your heart open, before it is opened. Keep your eyes to the wild, and squander not the iron, nor the oak.’
They slipped away, and were gone.
‘Meilyr?’
Meilyr jolted upright and spun to face Haydn.
‘Are you all right?’ Haydn went to reach for him, concerned. ‘You look as though you have seen a ghost?’
‘Wait.’ Meilyr raised his hands. ‘We cannot.’
Haydn mirrored the gesture, calming. ‘I know, sorry.’ Worry pooled in his grey eyes. Something else, deeper and sharper. ‘I… heard what happened. To the prince. Meilyr—’
Pedr stepped pointedly around the hedge behind Haydn. ‘Highness, I retrieved the mint, as requested.’
‘Thank you, Pedr.’ Meilyr walked away and did not look back.
Rainclouds hunkered comfortably over Eascild on the day of the summer
solstice. The day of the blessing ceremony.
An earlier downpour had slicked the cobbles and walls a dark, bloated grey.
Though it had paused, the central courtyard rang with the wet, impatient movement of horses and men.
All Eascild’s crownsworn stood at parade rest in rows, armed to their helms, to be appraised and blessed by the Khaimlic clerics.
The soon-to-be crowned Prince of Cyngalon.
Meilyr kept his eyes lowered where he stood, two paces behind Osian atop the steps to the castle’s main chapel.
There had been an incredibly long, droning service inside – apparently still a shorter, less-droning service than the one to be delivered for the actual coronation, on Osian’s birthday, in one week.
Osian had been anointed and declared worthy to inspect the forces outside. Meilyr had tried not to fret, even as Osian outwardly seemed fine. No one would have known, had it not spread to every inch of the castle, that the prince had been poisoned not so long ago.
Osian had knelt, then risen, and presented his sword with all the steadiness and beauty of a prince of fables. Meilyr had fought not to wring his hands, not to tug at the too-tight collar of his most formal whites, not to feel every gaze that continued to turn to him. To suspect him.
Now in the open, the clerics moved along the ranks of crownsworn with their incense and their chanting. At a silent command from Harlan, Osian – flanked by Aldreda and Wystan, Meilyr and Demelza and Edeva – made his way down the steps. Meilyr focused solely on not tripping.
The heirs’ white cloaks trailed behind them, heavy in the puddles, bleeding grey. Aldreda had told their attendants to leave them.
As they reached the plateau, each section of crownsworn placed their hands over their hearts and bowed in a silent salute.
A gesture repeated by those nobles and courtiers and staff who stood behind them, filling the courtyard.
Some of the crownsworn’s horses were palpably agitated, sensing the tension.
Meilyr could taste it at the back of his mouth.
He swallowed, ignoring it, just as he tried to ignore the hatred that dripped from Captain Radnor, stood before the first ranks they passed.
The way he tried to ignore the knowledge of the concealed archers on every battlement and in almost every window overlooking the space, armed with blood-steel arrows and bolts.
Lord Gelens was somewhere behind them, descending the steps with the court nobles who had been permitted in the chapel.
Every step was agonising. The cloy of the incense worse. They made it almost halfway, before Edeva – scooped into Demelza’s arms – burst loudly into tears.
The royal procession slowed, and Aldreda stepped out of line.
‘There, darling.’ She pulled her child close from an apologetic and exhausted Demelza, who had barely slept since Osian’s poisoning.
‘Mama’s got you,’ Aldreda soothed, touching Demelza’s arm, before adjusting her sheathed sword and moving past Meilyr, towards her original position.
‘As you were, everyone.’ Fond chuckles from some of the knights and crownsworn. ‘Children are—’
There are few things more terrible than the sound of an animal in pain.
Ahead, one of the crownsworn’s horses screamed, and bolted. Its rider tumbled backwards, thudding to the wet cobbles amongst the clerics. Another two crownsworn leapt from their saddles to run to them, all others in the courtyard halting and turning.
‘What happened?’ Osian barked.
Past the prince’s shoulder, Meilyr could see the face of the crownsworn who had fallen as one of the others started to help them up. They were familiar, breathing hard and shaking.
‘On your feet,’ the other crownsworn said. ‘Come on—’
They dropped their friend with a cry – as thick, barbed stems burst from the fallen crownsworn’s sternum.
Their flesh convulsed as the stems speared upwards, curled around, and roots clawed free from their spine.
Tangled around their torso. Crawled outwards towards their limbs, their head, and bloomed in trumpet-shaped golden flowers.
Cries and shrieks of panic. A great retreating of white as lines upon lines hauled backwards from the horror.
Osian drew his sword. ‘Find the sorcerer! Bar the gate!’
Meilyr stepped after him – but Demelza firmly caught his arm, one hand clutched at her chest in alarm.
The courtyard was awash with panicked nobles and shying horses. Only Osian strode closer, dirtied cloak sweeping behind him.
The crownsworn was encased in prickly foliage. Stems that twisted tighter, bloomed fiercer. Took shape until their appearance was no longer human but almost lupine. What had been a crownsworn picked itself up on four writhing, disjointed limbs.
Osian stopped as the creature shuddered and looked down the aisle – directly at him.
There were no eyes in its knotted head. Only wet, winding stems. Dripping flowers.
Beside it, another crownsworn drew their sword.
The creature lunged sideways, towards them.
Stems snapped at stone to propel it with sickening speed to its target.
Its mouth and front limbs engulfed the crownsworn, bearing them to the ground with only a muffled scream and the rough, useless sound of metal skimming greenery.
Far louder was the puncture of flesh, over and over, roiling into a singular stream of sound.
Osian broke through the terror that petrified them all like the sea breaking over rock.
His cloak snapped in the speed of his motion, and he drove his sword straight down – into the heart of the horror. Without hesitation, he heaved the blade out with a cry of effort and a splinter of stem-bits, and plunged down again.
Golden flowers twitched and shivered.
‘Get them free!’ Osian shouted. ‘Get them out!’
Pedr – Pedr, who had drawn their sword and stepped in front of Meilyr – loosed like an arrow to their prince, skidded to their knees, sword clattering as they drew their dagger to carve away at stems with one hand, the other delving, ripping, clutching at any part of the attacked crownsworn they could reach beneath the flesh-tight mess.
It took both of them to carve the mutilated body free. There was no doubt they were dead, but Pedr still dragged them clear, knelt as Osian stood, breathing hard over what had become of the creature that had once been a person.
Nothing but congealed lumps of severed, silent plant matter, rain-mingled sap and blood.