The Emerald Flame (6 page)

“Only a fool would meddle in the affairs of the Shining Ones.”

“Meddle?” This was absurd! “I do not
meddle
with you. I have done everything I can to keep away! It’s you—you and Rhiannon and Govannon—who have brought me to this!”

“Is that so?” came the cold, parched voice. “Then why do you wear the stones? Why do you bear the key? These are the tokens of one who offers herself willingly.” There was that cruel laughter again. “Or is it that you do not know their purpose?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Branwen said, a spark of anger igniting among her fear. “I am half dead of riddles and conundrums. I was told to come here. I came. What do you want of me?”

“I want to relieve my hunger and slake my thirst,” croaked the voice. “What do I want of you, Warrior Child? Why, I want to gnaw the scalp from your head
and wear your long dark hair around my neck to ward off the winter chills. I want to eat your face, child: lips, cheeks, and chin. I want to feel your eyeballs burst between my teeth. I want to chew on your tongue and suck the soft meats from your bloody and raw-boned skull.”

Branwen stared at the old hag in horror. Was this it, then? Had Blodwedd been right? Had she come here to face nothing but a dreadful death?

The humped shape rose from behind the candle flame and came slowly forward, one clawed hand clutching the handle of a misshapen stick. Merion of the Stones looked very much as Branwen had imagined. A hag, stooped and humpbacked, clad in shapeless ragged gray robes, tottering on feeble feet. But it was a shock to Branwen to see how Merion, bent and withered as she was, towered over her as she shuffled closer, her gray head almost scraping the stone roof of the cavern.

Branwen’s hand moved to her hip—reaching for the hilt of her sword. But it wasn’t there; she had left it in Blodwedd’s keeping! But the sword was not Branwen’s only weapon. With adder-quick fingers she slipped her leather slingshot from her belt and then ducked down and scooped up a small stone from the ground. Watching Merion as she approached, Branwen fitted the stone into the folded slingshot.

“Come no closer!” she warned. “Or I shall put out your eye!”

Merion chuckled in her throat.

Branwen swung the slingshot twice and loosed the stone. She had little hope of doing Merion any harm, but she was determined to try to defend herself against the terrible old hag.

The stone flew as swift as a bolt toward Merion’s huge and hideous head. Yet the old crone did not even flinch; and at the last moment the stone changed trajectory, veering off and cracking against the wall, breaking up and spitting sparks.

“Think you that
stone
will work against me, Warrior Child?” Merion said. “Why, the very ground beneath your feet will come alive to aid me!”

Branwen tried to back away from the approaching monstrosity; but before she could move more than a single step, cracks opened under her feet and lips of rock snagged around her ankles, holding her fast.

She struggled, trying to get her feet loose, but the stone only bit harder against her ankles until she had to cry out with the pain. Merion loomed over her, the lipless mouth opening like a grave. Branwen’s gorge rose as she looked up into the sunken eyes, seeing nothing but the flicker of a macabre yellow light under the heavy brows. She had at first thought that gleam to be reflected candlelight, but now she understood that the malignancy burned from deep within the hoary Mountain Hag.

Fain’s wings fluttered uneasily as Branwen fought in vain to free herself.

“Kill me then and be done with it!” Branwen shouted.

A hand snaked out, and a cold grip clamped viciously on Branwen’s upper arm. The huge face loomed closer.

“I have such power as you have never seen.” Merion’s breath was like ice on Branwen’s face. “I am the earth shaker, the rift opener—the devourer. My mouth is wide, my belly insatiable. I can drink an ocean dry. I can eat forest and field and moor. You are but a sweet passing morsel to me, Warrior Child. I shall rip you open like a ripe plum, and I shall gorge on you!”

Branwen struggled to pull free; but the fingers were locked agonizingly on her arm, and already a numbness was creeping down to her hand. Fain spread wide gray wings and took to the air, cawing loudly.

The words of a song sung to her by a bard in the Great Hall of Doeth Palas came into her mind:

Deceiver?

Branwen stopped struggling, trying desperately to clear her mind, to see beyond the pain and the fear and the yellow flames in the hidden eyes.

“Why do they call you deceiver?” Branwen shouted. But she thought she knew. “This is not real! This is untrue! Get away from me! I was not brought here to be your supper!” Already the pain was lessening in her arm, the grip loosening, the cold breath no longer blasting in her face.

She staggered as the jaws of rock pulled away from her ankles. The huge, loathsome shape was gone. The yellow candlelight flickered. Merion crouched against the wall, small and shrunken and watching with an amused and curiously satisfied expression on her misshapen, unlovely face.

“You will do,” Merion croaked, beating her stick on the hard ground. “You will do very well. It was a good choice She made.” She cackled for a few moments, her mouth hanging open to reveal brown peg-teeth and a tongue like cracked leather.

“You were testing me?” Branwen cried, striding forward angrily. “Haven’t I proven myself enough for you by now?” She paused as something the hag had said rang in her mind. “What do you mean, ‘It was a good choice
She
made'? Do you speak of Rhiannon?”

“No, Warrior Child, it was not she who chose you. Do you not know that by now? We are Guardians—we make no such choices.”

“Then who?” Fain came to Branwen, perching on her shoulder, gripping tight, and keeping close to her head.

“Who
is of no consequence to you at this time,
Warrior Child” came Merion’s grinding voice. “How is more to the purpose.
How
you are to serve me.”

“Rhiannon warned me of a great canker in the land,” said Branwen. “Now I know the true meaning behind her words. Llew ap Gelert must be destroyed. And you are to tell me how.”

“That is not your task, Warrior Child,” growled the ancient crone, stamping again with her gnarled stick. “Riddle me this: Who is it that soothes the blistering mountain when the summer sun beats down so fierce? Whose hand cools the brow of the lofty crag when the air rises in a shimmering haze and the buzzards hang motionless above the valley?”

Branwen stared at her, baffled by her questions, not even sure whether she was meant to answer.

“Who brings news from distant places when all the world is frozen? Who speaks in the gullies and ghylls? Whose voice echoes through the caverns?”

There was silence.

It became obvious that Merion was waiting for a response. Branwen thought through the odd questions. “Is it the wind?” she asked. A sudden understanding hit her. “The north wind! You mean Caradoc of the North Wind!”

The crone laughed again, slapping her knee and cracking her stick on the floor. “Did I not say a wise fool? Yes, Warrior Child, I speak of my brother the wind—my lost brother Caradoc.” A bony finger pointed across the candlelight. “This is the task I

lay upon you, Warrior Child—to seek for the place where the Saxons have caged my lovely brother … my droll and diverting brother … my dancing clown, my shape-shifting brother….” Her voice lowered to an incoherent muttering, as if she had forgotten Branwen was there.

“Is Caradoc a prisoner of the Saxons?” Branwen asked incredulously.

The hag’s head had thrust forward, the wattles of her neck shaking like hanks of rope. “He is!” she cried. “They trapped him in their foul webs, the dirty priesthood of the Saxons. Ten times ten years ago he fell to their wiles and was borne away.” Her voice rose to a wail. “My brother! My beautiful, bonny brother! I ache to hear your voice again! But you shall be restored to me. You shall be set free! The child has come to me at last—the child with the golden key!”

Branwen was astonished. She stared at the crone in utter bewilderment and disbelief. Of all the ends she had feared on this mountain—of all the tasks she had contemplated—to be asked to rescue one of the Shining Ones was so far beyond expectation that she was dumbfounded.

Merion peered into her face. “You will travel east, Warrior Child,” she said as though oblivious to Branwen’s consternation. “You will seek out Caradoc’s prison and you will bring it to me, for only under my eye will it be safe for you to use the key and release
him.” There was a pause, then the stick cracked down hard on the ground. “Warrior Child? Are you struck witless? Do you understand your task?”

Branwen started at the shout. “That’s no task for me,” she said. “My destiny is to save Brython from the Saxons, to defeat the traitor Llew, to raise an army against the invaders. That is what Rhiannon told me.” She shook her head. “If Caradoc of the North Wind cannot save himself, what hope do I have?”

Merion’s voice became impatient. “My brother is held by spells and incantations that have no power over you, Warrior Child,” she said. “And why do you bear the golden key if you are not to be the instrument of his release?”

“What key?” demanded Branwen. “I have no key. What is this key of which you speak?”

The hag lifted her arm and jerkily pointed the stick toward Branwen’s waist. “The golden key!” she growled. “I see it there, hanging from your belt! Do you think me blind, child?”

Branwen stared down at the few precious possessions that hung from the leather belt: a poke with flint and tinder in it, a haircomb that her mother had given her. A leather pouch that held six pieces of white crystal that Geraint had found on the mountain and given to her as a keepsake. And a small golden key gifted to her by her father on the tenth anniversary of her birth.

Branwen fingered the small key.

“You’re wrong,” she said, closing her fist around the key as though wanting to protect it from Merion’s cold gaze. “This has nothing to do with the Old Gods; my father found it in the ruins of a Roman temple when he was but a youth. He gave it to me as a birthday present.”

Merion’s crowing laughter rang around the cavern. “And who do you suppose guided your father’s footsteps to that desolate place, and who revealed to him at that moment the golden glint among the wreck and the ruin?” She cackled. “And who put it into his heart years later to pass the key on to his daughter?” The yellow eyes sparked like igniting flame. “Do you not perceive the truth yet, Warrior Child? There have been no loose threads in the pattern of your life; all that has happened to you is but part of the same great design.” The stick hammered again. “The key will open Caradoc’s prison—of that truth have no doubt, Warrior Child. All that you bear has its own purpose, its own part to play. Think you the white stones came to you by chance?”

“The stones?” Branwen clutched involuntarily at the leather pouch. “Geraint’s crystals, you mean?”

“Found by your brother, given to you,” said the Crone. “A thread in the tapestry.”

Branwen gaped at her. “Have you been haunting my family’s steps from before I was born?” she exclaimed. “Has there been no moment of my life free of your wiles and your ruses and intrigues?”

Merion shook her head. “You do not
listen,
Warrior Child,” she rebuked her. “It is not
we
who chose you; it is not
we
who wove the tapestry of your fate. It is
She!
Hers is the guiding hand—Hers the whispered word, Hers the womb from which all life springs, Hers the arms that embrace the past and the present and the future. Hers the burden of love for all of creation.”

As Merion spoke, Branwen felt a strange and overwhelming sensation. It was indescribable, inexplicable; but for a fleeting moment it was as though the vast, unknowable power that held the world in balance had turned from its unending task and focused its attention on her. For that splintered fraction of time, Branwen felt its presence bearing down on her, as strong as the heat and light of the noonday sun.

Then, in an instant, the sensation was gone. Branwen understood now that it would be pointless to seek from Merion of the Stones further knowledge of this great She. Such wonders would only be revealed in their own time and in their own way.

Branwen wiped her sleeve across her forehead, feeling feverish. There was a gaping feeling of emptiness under her ribs and a cold sweat on her skin.

“What must I do?” she asked Merion, wanting now only to get out of this bleak and chilling cavern and to see blue sky overhead and to be with her companions again.

“Come here to me,” said Merion. “Show me the white stones.”

Trembling, but not from fear, Branwen loosened the leather pouch from her belt as she stepped forward. She untied the neck and tipped the six crystals into her palm, then came around the yellow candle and stood in front of Merion, offering out her hand with all the determined trepidation of someone reaching into a fire to pull a friend to safety.

The Mountain Crone leaned forward. Her cold breath eddied around Branwen’s fingers. The crystals glittered and shone as though frosted with ice; and deep in the heart of each of them, Branwen saw a tiny rainbow coiling.

She had seen those beguiling flecks of colored light before—they came when the crystals were held up to sunlight and tilted in exactly the right way. But never before had the rainbows revealed themselves in such darkness.

Merion lifted an arm and passed her wrinkled old hand over the stones, muttering to herself words that Branwen could not make out.

“There, ‘tis done,” said the Stone Hag. “Keep them safe, Warrior Child. I have breathed part of my own powers into them. I am diminished by this loss, and I will not be whole again till you return from your mission and need them no more.”

Branwen gazed at the translucent crystals. “What have you done to them?”

“They have now in them the power to allow you to pass unnoticed among your enemies,” said Merion.