The Keys to the Realms (The Dream Stewards) Page 12

  ELEVEN

  The sentry rapped twice on Alwen’s chamber door to signal his arrival, and Hywel was obliged to wait for permission to enter. Since the attack of the Cythraul, he could hardly piss without one of the Cad Nawdd soldiers watching over his shoulder. And now it seemed Madoc’s successor intended to remind him yet again who was keeper of this castle.

  The seeress Glain, a wistful beauty with full lips and shining ginger-brown hair, opened the door and ushered him into the suite. Hywel found the girl interesting. He valued her magical talents, but she was also pleasing on other accounts. She had noble features, a proud nose and aristocratic brow, and intelligent eyes that shifted from one shade of gray to another, depending upon the intensity of her mood. Glain averted her gaze to avoid his, but he smiled at her anyway. Although she presented herself as docile and dutiful, he knew there was fire in her soul.

  What he hadn’t been able to determine to his full satisfaction was her station. The governance of the Stewardry was as complex as that of any monarchy or religion, but the distinctions between the leadership and the membership were less strictly drawn and apparently adaptable to circumstances and familiarity. Glain answered to Alwen where before she had answered to Madoc, but the relationship between the two was not the same.

  Glain set two silver cups on the hearth to warm and then made a discreet exit, leaving Hywel to await Alwen’s audience.

  There was no one in this world unto whom he would willingly submit himself, but he had always understood that his destiny was tied to the Stewardry. With Madoc gone and its leadership in question, it was only prudent to cultivate alliances with whoever held the power or might one day come into it.

  Waiting, however, was intolerable to Hywel, unless there was a strategic advantage to be gained or it was passed in some purposeful way. Elsewise, it was a waste of valuable time. While he paced the receptory to keep from losing his patience, he examined the room.

  Alwen’s receptory was, as far as Hywel could discern, still Madoc’s. Her presence had not supplanted his, which surprised him. In fact, Hywel could find nothing in the appointments that appeared to belong to Alwen except for the implements on the ritual altar against the wall behind the throne—a small, hammered silver plate and bowl, a handworked silver chalice, a long-bladed dagger with an exquisitely carved bone handle, three beeswax candles, and an assortment of jars and vials filled with oils and herbs. Hywel particularly admired the wooded landscape and the celestial imagery in the tapestry hanging on the wall above the altar.

  Hywel decided to wait near the hearth in the adjacent alcove, tempted to help himself to the brew Alwen habitually kept heating in the coals. It was a sweeter drink than he usually liked, but the recipe had a unique spice to it that had a calming effect. It was so appealing that he had wondered once if the brew were a magical potion that Alwen used as a method of control.

  She entered from the bedchamber, dressed in a simple gown made from exotic cloth. This was appropriately regal attire, but not the formal dress of the Sovereign. He had been prepared for the robe. Perhaps this was not the official audience he had presumed.

  She joined him at the hearth and gestured toward the divan facing the fire and two upholstered chairs positioned on either side. She seated herself in the chair facing him. “Sit, so we may speak plainly.”

  Hywel obliged, taking the other armchair and eyeing the pot in the coals. “Shall I pour?”

  “If you please.” Alwen watched him closely, ever assessing him. “Then we’ll get straight to the matters at hand.”

  Hywel filled the silver cups and handed one to her before folding his tall frame into his seat. “I was surprised to receive your summons. The hour is very late for an audience.”

  Alwen smiled. She knew full well it wasn’t the hour that annoyed him. “Like you, I favor discretion in my dealings. I find the later the hour, the more assured I am of true privacy. I trust I have not intruded on anything more important than your rest.”

  Hywel’s smile was sly, almost lecherous. “Nothing that can’t wait until my return.”

  “Good.”

  Hywel imagined her squelching her scorn, wondering whether she was more offended by his philandering or the willing women of her Order who obliged him.

  She sipped at her cup, pacing the conversation. “The captain of my guard has advised me that you have requested workers be assigned to clear the catacombs. You are aware that it is by my direct command that those tunnels remain undisturbed?”

  “I was granted free access to those tunnels by Madoc himself.” Hywel drank deep from his cup before continuing. “I have relied on the labyrinth for years. The obstruction inconveniences me.”

  “Fane Gramarye is always open to you, but those catacombs were blocked when Madoc met his end. They are known to our enemy, ” Alwen argued. “Clearing them makes us vulnerable to ingress.”

  Hywel shrugged. “Then guard the junction where the maze breaches the understructure of the Fane, if it concerns you so much. I doubt our enemies know as much about those passages as you fear. There are many routes, stretching for leagues in every direction. To my knowledge, none but my men and I have traveled them in decades, if not generations.”

  “I see.” Alwen could not hide her surprise. She had not known the extent to which the labyrinth reached. “Then you know the tunnels well.”

  “Every twist and turn. They are an advantage that I am unwilling to abandon. With all due respect, Sovereign,” Hywel set his cup on the floor in front of him and folded his hands as he leaned forward to make his point. “Do not expect me to respond politely should you decide to rescind any favor Madoc has granted me.”

  “You speak of Madoc in such familiar terms,” Alwen said. “You and he were very close?”

  “Close enough that I am as wounded by his loss as I am my own father’s.” Hywel’s brow furrowed reflexively and he wished for more of Alwen’s strange brew. It pained him more than he expected to speak of either man. “Madoc is missed.”

  “Yes, he is.” Finally Alwen sipped from her own cup. “It would seem we share his loss. We have something in common, Hywel, something other than your destiny.”

  “Perhaps we do.” Hywel reached for the ale pot and poured more into his cup. “And perhaps we might yet forge a true alliance. But I do not know you, Alwen of Pwll.”

  “Is this why you flatter my second?” Alwen smiled, but the smile was arrogant. “To learn from her what you think I might withhold?”

  Hywel recognized the territorial tone in her comment. He also understood now why she had summoned him. Alwen understood the value of alliances. “She is useful to me.”

  “Because she was close to Madoc,” Alwen challenged, “or because she is close to me?”

  “Both.” Hywel could be diplomatic when it was prudent, but Alwen was drawing boundaries and close to daring him to cross them. “But more so because of her dreams and the keen way she interprets the foresight.”

  “I see.” Alwen clenched her fingers more tightly around the cup in her hands.

  “The girl has a remarkable talent,” Hywel continued, aware that his comments had evoked a twinge of envy. “She will be an asset to me when I am high king of all Cymru.”

  “You claim the throne to a kingdom that does not yet exist,” said Alwen, “a throne that can never exist without my help. I stand in Madoc’s stead today, but when his heir is found, it is I who will lead the Circle of Sages. It is the power of the Guardians of the Realms that will protect you.”

  “I know the prophecy.” Hywel was careful to keep his tone level, controlled. “Perhaps even better than you. It is my sacrifice, my leadership that guides it to being.”

  “And my hand that stays its course,” Alwen bristled, and the thunderstone flooring beneath them trembled. “Do not challenge me, Hywel. Sorcery can either bring your greatness to light or eclipse it altogether.”

>   A steely smile ever so slightly widened Hywel’s lips. She had reached the limits of his tolerance. “And so might sorcery be eclipsed, Sovereign, by my hand. This is the world of man. Were it not, your prophecy would not call forth a mortal king. Nor would you be hiding here.”

  “Come now, Hywel.” Alwen’s lips pursed and her eyes narrowed. “Enough parry and chase. I do hope we will not need to battle wits at every turn. We need each other to survive.”

  “Agreed.” Hywel had grown weary of her attempts to cow him. “But it was you who called this fight, Sovereign. I may not be mageborn, but I have felt you skirting the edges of my mind since the moment I entered this room.”

  Her eyes widened slightly. She had not expected this.

  “Oh, yes.” Hywel could not help but gloat. “I know of your power. You could easily pluck any thought from my head at whim, and yet you goad me. What exactly do you hope I will reveal? Some uncontrollable deviance or sinister motive?”

  Alwen maintained her impenetrable calm. “How and what a person chooses to share—or hide—reveals things about their nature that are far more useful to me than what they readily admit.”

  “Then I shall be direct.” Hywel leveled a pointed gaze at her. “Madoc disclosed only what he believed I needed to know, when he believed I needed to know it. This I accepted, because I knew and trusted him. Never once did he misguide me or fail me when I was in need of his aid. You I neither know nor trust. Perhaps you and I will eventually come to better terms, but for now I extend you very little credit. I will value your wisdom as it proves its worth, from one minute to the next.”

  “A prudent practice, and one that I am also inclined to follow, given the luxury of time.” Alwen regarded him carefully, considering her response. “But time is a luxury we do not have. I suggest we each make a leap of faith.”

  “What makes you think I haven’t already?” Hywel piercing stare grew even sharper. “I remain in your audience by choice, Sovereign. If time is turning against us, if Machreth’s power grows as he seduces my allies, what is gained by waiting?”

  “Perhaps nothing,” Alwen said, “perhaps everything. But none of the greatness you desire will come to you unless the fates unfold as the prophecy foretells. Until the last two Guardians of the Realms return, your destiny is at risk. For now, you must fight to hold your ground, and we must fight to hold ours.”

  “Then support me in my campaigns,” he insisted. “With your sorcery alone I can bring the rogue lords to heel and crush Clydog’s threat. Then none will dare lay their loyalty at Machreth’s feet, and your rule will be secured as well as mine. When the rest of your sorceresses return, I will acknowledge the Council and pay the debt I owe to the prophecy.”

  “How like Machreth you sound,” she accused. “The prophecy is not an entitlement that can be bartered or bought, not even with the wealth of reason and good intentions you possess. It is a divine decree that must be obeyed. I am bound to the rites as set forth by the Ancients on the day they foresaw and decreed your rise.”

  An impasse had been reached, but Hywel was not ready to acknowledge it. He would not leave without securing some kind of victory. His pride would allow no less. “Then, in the meantime, allow me to reopen the labyrinth. Rotate my men into your ranks if you cannot spare enough of your own soldiers to guard the tunnels against ingress.”

  “Agreed.” Alwen accepted the compromise more readily than he had expected. “Provided your men will also work to excavate the cavern that holds Madoc’s remains.”

  “Of course.” Hywel felt more placated than satisfied, but that was enough.

  “I require one more thing, however.” Alwen rose and crossed the room to the altar on the wall behind her throne.

  Hywel followed, wary but curious. With a snap of her fingers the candles on the altar alighted. From its rest on an embroidered silk cloth beside the silver bowl, Alwen retrieved the long-bladed knife and turned to Hywel.

  “There shall be a vow between us, Hywel, sworn here and now.”

  “A blood oath?” Hywel was surprised. “To what end?”

  “If we are to succeed, I must have your trust, and you must have mine.”

  Alwen pulled back the right sleeve of her robe, exposing the hand that had been blackened in her battle with Machreth and Madoc’s signet ring. With the tip of the blade, she slit a small vein at the base of her wrist and allowed the blood to dribble into the chalice. When enough had pooled in the bottom of the vessel, she stopped the bleed with a puff of her breath. The incision vanished.

  “A blood oath is ever binding. No pledge is more sacred.” She turned to face Hywel and offered him the knife. “Are you willing?”

  Hywel was moved by her gesture and stepped forward to take the blade. He slashed through the thin flesh on the underside of his forearm, cutting a lengthwise gash that was deep enough for the blood to course freely, but carefully placed to avoid tendon and artery. There was no vow worth risking full use of his sword hand. Hywel held his arm over the chalice and waited for enough of his life force to join with hers, before pulling back.

  “Here.” Alwen held out her hand. “Let me.”

  Hywel offered his arm for her healing. To his amazement, a gentle exhale across the bloody gape instantly sealed the gash. He swiped the residual mess on his trouser leg and watched as Alwen lifted the chalice with both hands and swirled the contents to mix their separate lettings together into a single elixir. Then she raised the vessel skyward to invite the Ancients to bear witness and proclaimed the oath.

  “On the blood of our now inseparable essence, we pledge to one another our unrenounceable loyalty, unrelenting faith, and unquestioning devotion. Ever shall we be joined by this oath and bound to its demands so long as we each shall serve the prophecy to which we owe our lives or until death shall release us from this debt.”

  “I so vow.” She lifted the chalice to her lips, sipped the blood of their bond, and then offered the vessel to Hywel.

  He accepted the cup without question, but not without hesitation. The only faith Hywel knew was his sure belief in his destiny. The prophecy was the purpose to which he had been born, and the only thing more valuable to Hywel than the promise of this destiny was his word. He did not give it lightly. In fact, he rarely gave it at all.

  He raised the cup to drink. “I so vow.”

  TWELVE

  Glain arose far before dawn, anxious and ambivalent. Nothing good had come from several hours of fitful meditation once the dreams had departed. Certainly not sleep, which lately was almost as dreaded as it was necessary.

  Since the premonitions had begun nearly two years before, very few nights had passed undisturbed, and the dreams that came were always ghastly. She had long ago given up hoping for visions of glad tidings. That was not her gift. However, a forewarning of an ugly fate was preferable to no warning at all. And sometimes Glain was able to effect a change for the better.

  Such was the obscene nature of these precognitions. The visions revealed, often in incongruent scenes of metaphoric horror, a destiny that was already unfolding and all but inevitable should events progress unchallenged. The revelations did not, however, offer any indication of how one might intervene. That was a matter of interpretation and, very often, accidental discovery. And this was the dilemma that truly kept her up nights and the one that troubled her so deeply now.

  Glain dressed in the dark, too distracted to bother with the candle ends or the hearth. Twice more the grisly vision of the clashing stags had come to her, each reiteration more urgent and bloody than the last. She had believed her conversations with Hywel would alter the outcome, but the dream remained the same. Apparently an improvement in Hywel’s perspective was not enough, and Glain had the distinct impression that the time for change was waning.

  She took to wandering the second-floor corridors so as not to disturb the slumbering souls in the third-floor residences w
ith her restlessness. Not that the answers were any more likely to find her as she prowled the Fane than they had while lying awake in her bed, but somehow Glain felt less useless.

  The rhythmic whisper of her soft-soled house shoes scuffing the stone floor created an illusion of companionship at first, filling the quiet with something more than the sound of her breathing. But soon, given the dark images and brooding thoughts occupying her mind and the shifting shadows cast upon the corridor walls by the guttering torches, she began to feel vulnerable.

  It was still an hour at least until the novices assigned the house duties would be up and about, and Glain decided to wait out the time until she could call for tea by pondering her worries in the scriptorium. She eased open one of the heavy double doors partway and slid inside, feeling a little sneaky, but she did not want her solitude interrupted by someone investigating a suspicious noise.

  The ember glow from the remains of yesterday’s fire was welcoming, but the huge room with its alcoves and shelved recesses and towering book stacks was a less reassuring refuge than she had hoped. Glain snapped her fingers and incited the charred, half-spent logs in the hearth into a short-lived flare, then sat in the nearest armchair, facing the dying heat.

  The room was still too cold and too dark to be comfortable. Alone with the memories of her night terrors, Glain’s attention began to wander from the soft crackle of barely burning wood toward the random creak and clunk of settling foundation stones and the hushed moans of the walls breathing. A breeze, sneaking through a gap in the framing of one of the oversized arched-transom windows that punctuated the exterior wall, rustled the coverings. The drapes were drawn over the leaded panes to keep out the cold, but they also shut out any celestial light. Glain went to the window and pulled back the heavy curtain on one side, hoping for moon sign.