War in Hagwood Read online

  “Ah yes,” she said with a thin smile. “That trespass into the tomb of my late father. … Those present must certainly be killed. That shall be done; but what of you, Sir Waggarinzil?”

  “Me, Your Highliness?”

  “You too were present at that treasonous gathering, and to merely set foot there is, as you know, punishable by death. What is to be done?”

  The goblin stared up at her, afraid. “B-B-But, Majesty!” he pleaded. “How else could I have taken the key and foiled Fanderyn’s plan had I not been there?”

  “I owe you so much,” she admitted. “But it is not fitting for a goddess to be indebted to anyone.”

  Waggarinzil fell on his face, but he knew he was doomed.

  “Spare me!” he cried.

  The High Lady lifted the heavy hammer once more and raised it above her head.

  “My laws must not be broken,” she said with terrifying calm as she brought it smashing down. “There can be no exceptions.”

  A moment later, the goblin’s lifeless body slumped to the floor and a look of callous amusement passed over Rhiannon’s face.

  “By your shattered skull,” she laughed, mocking his manner of speech. “What an unlucky day it turned out to be for you after all.”

  Discarding the hammer, she stepped over him and left the forge behind her. Silently, the owl came fluttering down to her shoulder.

  “Now, my provost,” she said in a voice charged with malice. “Before I destroy those insolent nobles and my true reign can commence, I must pay a call on Gabbity.”

  * Chapter 10 *

  Gwyddion

  GAMALIEL TUMPIN CLUNG DESPERATELY to one of the Wyrm’s great horns. Bufus was still yahooing, while Kernella’s screams had finally dried up and her voice was more hoarse than ever.

  They could not believe what had happened. The stone serpent had rushed straight for the vaulted stone ceiling of the shrine chamber at a shattering speed, and they had been certain they were going to die. And then, an instant before they were going to hit, the ceiling opened up before them, peeling back magically, revealing a round tunnel boring high into the rock above.

  Through this, the ancient Wyrm called Sacrifice had sped, rushing and tearing through the darkness. It was an exhilarating ride. At first they had soared furiously upward, then there was a jerk sideways and a dip, followed by a complete revolution that made their stomachs flip over and now they were traveling almost horizontally through the earth. They could not tell how long the mad journey lasted. The suffocating blackness of the subterranean world obliterated all sense of time and their thoughts were consumed with trying to keep from falling off. Sometimes the serpent twisted recklessly along the tunnel, and Bufus’s shrieks of enjoyment warbled and juddered, the echoes spiraling after them. Finally, there was another violent jerk and they raced straight up once more.

  Immediately, the blind darkness was snatched away and dazzling light blasted into their eyes. There was a tremendous jolt as Sacrifice came to an abrupt halt and they were hurled from his monstrous head. The three young werlings were flung clear.

  For a moment, they somersaulted through the air. Then they bumped onto soft, springy turf and lay there grunting and gasping for breath, shielding their eyes from the amber rays of the sinking sun.

  Gamaliel was the first to recover. He sat up and glanced around, squinting under the open sky. They were above ground once more, in a remote part of Hagwood he did not recognize.

  Magnificent oak trees grew in every direction, but he and the others were lying on a grassy, daisy-sprinkled mound within a small clearing. Gamaliel turned to look behind him and what he saw brought an exclamation of surprise to his lips.

  Upon the brow of that hillock reared four great stones and, resting on top of them was an even larger slab of lichen-spotted granite.

  “The Devil’s Table!” he said. “It must be.”

  Then, with a shock, he realized that one of those huge support stones was actually the head of Sacrifice, jutting from the grass. Even as he stared at it, the Wyrm’s features became indistinct. The eyes closed and the horns retracted. The golden crown slipped free to go rolling down the mound, crumbling as it went, the gleaming fragments falling into the grass where they transformed into dandelions and buttercups. The serpent’s jaws fused together. Gamaliel blinked. Every trace of the fearsome head was gone and in its place stood a huge boulder, worn smooth by time and scoured by the weather.

  “Thank you,” he murmured.

  “That was the best thing, ever!” Bufus burbled as he picked himself up. “One more time! Hey, where did old Snake Eyes go?”

  Gamaliel smiled faintly. “I think he’s gone back to journeying through the earth,” he replied. “Following the ancient invisible courses underground to renew them with his ancient power before he returns to the cavern.”

  “How do you know so much?” the Doolan boy asked sarcastically.

  “Just a feeling,” Gamaliel said.

  “Stop showing off and pretending you know more than you do,” rasped his sister in a cracked whisper as she plodded over to join them. “I’m the eldest here, so listen to me, the pair of you. We’ve got to get back to Finnen and help him. If the sun’s setting over there, then that’s west and we need to go the opposite direction—follow me.”

  She began walking down the side of the mound.

  “What are you doing?” Gamaliel called after her. “You heard what Nest said. We have to wait here and meet someone who’s going to help us. Finnen won’t even be at the tower anymore. Weren’t you listening to anything?”

  Kernella gave one of her annoying sniffs. “I don’t believe a word of it!” she answered. “How would he know anything, stuck down there in his silly lantern? He was barmy and we’re barmy, too, for believing he was real in the first place. I reckon we bashed our heads and dreamed the whole thing.”

  “But the serpent!” her brother shouted. “He was real, you know he was. How did we get here otherwise?”

  Kernella shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about that!” she said stubbornly. “Don’t mention it again.”

  She had made up her mind to dismiss everything that had happened as a delirious figment. Her practical, skeptical nature did not want to believe in such things and so she was determined not to. She had encountered far too many outlandish creatures recently and a long tramp through the forest would do her jangled wits and snappy temper the world of good.

  “Come on you two!” she ordered. “There’s a long way to go to the Lubber’s tower.”

  Gamaliel glanced at Bufus.

  “Your sister’s mental,” the Doolan boy commented.

  “Hurry up!” she croaked.

  “We’re not budging!” Gamaliel yelled. “You go get lost in the forest by yourself if you’re mad enough, but we know what we have to do.”

  Kernella had reached level ground but halted and looked back at them still standing resolutely up there. Her brother sounded different. He had changed so much in the past few days. She had always been able to boss him about and tell him what to do.

  She returned her gaze to the forest. The violet shadows of evening were deepening beneath the trees. Did she really want to journey through there alone? It would be night very soon and Hagwood was a perilous place even without the threat of the High Lady’s soldiers lurking in the shadows. Other unnamed beings dwelled out there in the wild.

  She recalled the chilling answer that Nest had given to her foolish question. One of them would not live to see another dawn. In spite of her assertion that they had imagined that mysterious creature, she had to admit it was a very convincing hallucination and she did not want to tempt that grim prediction by risking the forest on her own.

  With a peevish expression on her face, she began stomping back up the mound. Her brother might be impossible to control, but she could still thump him, and Buf
us too.

  As she puffed her way up the slope, however, she forgot about hitting them. Something new had caught her attention and her eyes grew wide.

  “When are these silly delusions going to stop?” she cried, folding her arms and scowling.

  Puzzled, the boys followed her gaze and turned slowly.

  A gray mist was creeping from the grass beneath the Devil’s Table. It rose up, swelling under the capstone and soon that space was filled with dense, spectral fog that swirled and rolled like a trapped cloud.

  The werlings gasped in wonder. Then, within that impenetrable mist, they heard a gruff cough and, to their surprise, a large human hand emerged from it, followed by another.

  The figure of an old man crawled out of the fog. With a glad grunt, he straightened and stretched himself and waggled his fingers in front of his face as if to make sure they were still in working order. Then he stamped his feet and rubbed his back.

  He was dressed in long white robes. A broad collar of gold adorned his shoulders and the last flickering rays of the dying sun gleamed and flashed over it, glinting in his gray hair and stiff, grizzled beard. Beneath the Devil’s Table the fog was thinning and, although the air was still and calm, it blew out across the mound and vanished into the night.

  To the werlings’ relief, the stranger did not turn to look at them; in fact, he did not seem to be even aware of their presence. Rubbing his hands together as if wiping the last traces of the mist, he lifted his hawk-like eyes and fixed them on the horizon, out across the forest to where the lofty, pine-crowned crag of the Witch’s Leap reared up against the sky. His brows slid together and he became lost in concentration.

  The more Gamaliel studied him, the more he decided the human did not appear particularly fierce or alarming. The old man wore a chaplet of oak leaves upon his head and a leather bag overstuffed with herbs that was buckled to the wide belt about his waist. His face was criss-crossed with many lines and wrinkles and he carried no weapon, except for a small curved knife used for cutting plants.

  When Kernella reached Bufus and her brother, she jabbed a finger toward the trees, signaling for the boys to run to them and hide.

  To her annoyance Gamaliel shook his head. “But he’s the one!” he whispered. “The one we were sent to meet.”

  Before she could argue, Bufus marched forward and, with his hands in his pockets, called out in a breezy voice, “Oi, granddad! It’s dangerous to smoke in your nightie, you know. What you gawking at then?”

  The man started and cast his eyes around the surrounding forest.

  “Down here!” Bufus shouted impatiently.

  The stranger lowered his gaze and noticed the three werlings for the first time. A delighted smile parted his brindled beard.

  “Thus spoke the prophecy,” he murmured, sticking a little finger into his ear and grinning to himself. “The savior and his companions are come, here at the weeping end of days. Though they are more meager of limb than I did guess.”

  “Fabulous,” Bufus groaned. “Another loony!”

  Kernella stepped up with a scowl. “I might be small,” she cried, reaching for her wergle pouch, “but I can change into a ferret and bite you on the shin easy enough!”

  The man bowed low. “Peace, Carrion Hag,” he declared in a reverent tone. “I seek no quarrel with you. Indeed, I would fear such a thing.”

  “Ha!” Bufus laughed at her outraged face. “Even the big barmies have heard of you, Carrion Hag.”

  Kernella pinched him.

  “I am but a mortal man,” the stranger continued. “Guardian of the Groves, Priest of the thundering Sky Father, oak seer, augur, and teacher of the old ways. I am only a servant to mighty spirits such as you.”

  “Mighty spirits?” Bufus repeated with a snicker. “That sounds about right. You should water it down a bit, mister.”

  “Your words are veiled in mystery,” the man said, enthralled. “The meaning escapes me but I rejoice to hear them from the Trickster’s own lips. Far have I journeyed to be here at this ending, to hearken to the dying music of the world.”

  “He’s not going to sing, is he?” Kernella grumbled, her heart sinking.

  “In that frock, anything’s possible,” Bufus answered. He rolled his eyes at Gamaliel and said, “Hey Gammy, you speak fluent nutter. Try and squeeze some sense out of Beardy here.”

  Gamaliel sighed. His sister and Bufus Doolan really were aggravating. Placing his hands behind his back, he smiled shyly up at the old man, then cleared his throat.

  “Good evening, sir,” he began in his most polite manner.

  “You are so lame!” Bufus mocked behind his hand.

  Gamaliel ignored him. “Good evening, sir,” he continued. “We were sent here to meet you. I am Gamaliel Tumpin; this is my sister, Kernella; and that is Bufus Doolan … a friend.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Gammy,” Bufus blurted.

  “We were told you would help us,” Gamaliel carried on. “Our friends and families are in danger and a terrible battle is being fought on the eastern edge of the forest. We need to know what to do.”

  The stranger listened keenly then raised his eyebrows in bewilderment. “How can I counsel such as you?” he asked. “You who are chosen to open the way to victory. You need no aid from me. I am but mortal—dust and clay.”

  “I think that fog went in through his ears and melted his brain,” Bufus muttered.

  “Ask him who he is,” Kernella prompted. “What he’s doing here and whose side he’s on.”

  The man heard her and placed his left hand upon his chest in greeting. “I am named Gwyddion,” he announced.

  “Fancy!” said Bufus archly.

  “I am come to witness the final stroke, as sung in the prophecy poem of the great bard.”

  To Bufus’s amusement, the man replaced his little finger in his ear and continued. “For long years that poem has burned in my dreams. It is sung that when the great hill cleaves in two and the hidden peoples ride to war, when armies clash and the battle’s roar shakes the stars, then shall the terror come. Horrors conjured from the great burning shall storm ’neath leaf and shadow, scattering foe and kin before them. Then shall the world be still and dawn or darkness everlasting will be decided. In that dreadful hour, the Blessed One will point the way.”

  He stared over at the forest, his eyes sparkling. “That is why I called on the Thunderer, the sky god,” he said in a whisper. “To rip apart the curtaining years that I may step beyond and voyage through time. To gaze on that awful moment, to learn at last whether light or dark is the victor, for the verses do not tell. Nine nights I fasted whilst nine fires blazed and I sat vigil within these stones, calling for the way to open so I might pass—and thus it was granted. Behold, I stand upon tomorrow’s soil. The sons of the sons of the oaks are heavy of years. The greenwood is greater and wilder and the stones we placed here are grown weary with time.”

  “Do you think it’s just us who get the crazies?” Bufus hissed at Kernella. “Or do other folk get lumbered as well?”

  “Wasps to honey,” she replied with a resigned shrug.

  Gamaliel turned an impatient face on them. “Shut up, the pair of you!” he ordered. “Why can’t you keep quiet, just for once? You know how serious this is!”

  He returned his attention to the stranger, with bright, eager eyes. “Now I know what you are,” he announced, jumping up and down and punching the air. “You’re a Dooit!”

  “Then we are not wholly forgotten,” the old man said, smiling faintly. “Though our own word is Deruwydd, Blessed One.”

  “The wizards who raised the standing stones,” the boy continued. “Even the Hag’s Finger we have back home.”

  “They are our markers along the backs of the earth serpents,” Gwyddion told him. “Their strength flows mightily through this great forest.”

  “Dooit,
blew it, chew it,” Bufus scoffed. “Why do you keep shoving your finger in your ear? Growing turnips in there or something?”

  Gwyddion regarded him with kindly patience and held up his little finger. “This is my instrument of divination,” he explained, “and I must attend to it.”

  Both Bufus and Kernella burst out laughing.

  An exasperated Gamaliel shook his head. He couldn’t remain next to them and speak to the old man if they were going to keep interrupting and being scornful. So, with a final warning glare that told them to stay put and caused them to pull faces back at him, he scrambled up the nearest support stone and swung himself onto the top of the Devil’s Table.

  “That’s better!” he declared, standing on the weathered capstone, almost level with the stranger’s chest. “I don’t have to crick my neck talking to you now. Take no notice of Bufus and my sister, they’ve had a rough time—we all have.”

  Gwyddion bowed again. “You honor me, Little Master,” he said. “It is sung that the Blessed One shall journey with his protectors, the Trickster and the Grim-Faced Carrion Hag. Their aspect is not so loathly as I did fear and worse times are yet to come.”

  “Then tell me,” Gamaliel asked. “What are we to do? How can we help our friends?”

  “Friends?” the man said. “What matter your friends at this time? It is the Deathless One you must contest with.”

  “Me?” the boy cried.

  “It is sung that when the black feather spills the blood of the white, the Blessed One shall make the challenge. The power lies in his hands alone.”

  “Me?” Gamaliel repeated. “Fight the High Lady? That’s madness! How does the poem say I manage that? It’s impossible!”

  Gwyddion heaved a solemn sigh. “That is where the poem ends,” he said and, half closing his eyes, he began to recite:

  Then high upon the haunted crag,

  whence swine and witches fly.

  The Blessed One shalt use His power,

  ’gainst She who cannot die.

  Thus when the world is failing,