With tears in my eyes, I turned away and stumbled down the hill to the stream where I knelt and bathed my face in the clear cold water. While I was washing there, I heard a voice coming from the birch grove—a melody falling light as birdsong. I rose and splashed across the stream and entered the grove.
I stepped softly through dappled green shadows and passed among the slender white birch trees, following the song. I came to a clearing and paused. In the center of the clearing in a pool of golden sunlight stood a bower made of birch branches; the song was coming from the bower.
My senses quickened. I moved cautiously from the cover of the trees and entered the meadow. At my approach the singing stopped. I saw a movement from within the green-shadowed interior, and I, too, halted.
A woman clothed in green and yellow emerged. Her hair was softly golden in the sunlight, falling around her face and, with her head bent, I could not see who it was. She stepped gracefully from the arbor and cupped her hands to the sun as if she would gather in sunbeams like water. And then, though I had not moved or even breathed, she turned to me and said, “Llew, there you are. I have been waiting for you. Why do you tarry so?”
At this she pulled back the hair from her face. I gasped in disbelief. She laughed at my distraction and said, “Well, where is my welcome kiss?” And oh, her voice was sweet music to my ear.
“Goewyn?”
She held out her arms to me. “I am waiting, best beloved.”
“Goewyn, you are dead. I saw you die.”
“Dead?” She said the word as gently as a butterfly lighting on a petal. Still smiling—her lips formed a delicious curve that swept into the fold of her soft cheek—she lifted her chin in mock defiance. “I am done with dying,” she said. “Now where is my kiss?”
I stepped willingly into her embrace and felt her warm lips on mine and a taste like honey on my tongue. I crushed her to me, kissing her mouth and cheek and neck, holding her tight lest she slip like bright sunshine through my fingers.
“I thought I had lost you,” I told her, tears of joy welling in my eyes. I breathed in the warm living scent of her as if I could breathe her in with it, make her part of me. “Never leave me, Goewyn.”
She laughed softly. “Leave you? How could I ever leave you? You are part of me now, as I am part of you.”
“Tell me, again. Please, tell me you will never leave me.”
“I will never leave you, my soul,” she whispered. “I love you forever . . . forever . . .”
“Llew? What are you doing?” The voice was Tegid’s.
I turned on him with some exasperation. “Can you not see what I am doing? You are not wanted here. Go away.”
“Llew, come back to the fire. You have been dreaming.”
“What?”
Tegid’s face grew dim, as if a cloud had passed overhead, blotting out the sun.
“Come back to camp with me,” he said. “You have been walking in your sleep.”
With these words, the sun-favored clearing vanished. I looked around and saw that I was back in the forest and it was night. The leafy bower was gone, and Goewyn was nowhere to be seen.
I spoke to no one for two whole days after that. Heartsick, discouraged, and embarrassed, I avoided all my companions. If any command was required, Cynan or Bran saw to it and gave the order.
We pushed deeper into the forest. The trees grew larger, their great entwined limbs and interlaced branches imprisoning the light, making our passage dim and, if that were possible, even more silent. If we had been sewn in leather sacks it could not have been closer or more stifling than Coed Nos had become.
An air of malignant weariness emanated from the twisting roots and boles around us; languor seeped like an ooze from the soft leaf mold under our feet. Lethargy, like the gray lichen that covered everything, clung to our limbs, bleeding strength with every step.
We rode single file, heads down, shoulders bent. Those on foot went ahead so that no one should be left behind. Tegid feared that if anyone fell back, we would never see them again. Cynan and Bran took it in turn to lead, changing every time we stopped to rest and water the horses. They did their best to keep a steady pace and keep the men moving despite the torpor.
Even so, we seemed not so much to journey as to view a slowly revolving trail. We moved, but did not advance; we proceeded, but never arrived. We staggered steadily forward toward a perpetually receding destination. Day passed day, and we gradually lost track of the days. We slept little, talked less, and drove ourselves relentlessly on.
Food became scarce. We had hoped to hunt in this forest—at least to encounter game we might take along the way. If there was game in the forest, we never saw it, nor crossed any animal trail. Our dried meat gave out, and we subsisted on old bread and ale, soaking the crusts in our cups to soften them. When the ale ran out, we used water from the river. The bread became moldy and unfit to eat, but we ate it anyway. There was nothing else. And when the bread was gone, we boiled the precious little grain we had left with roots and bark that Tegid found to make a thin gruel. The horses ate the gray lichen that we harvested from the trunks with knives and swords and bound into bales for them. It was food ill-suited for such noble beasts, but at least there was an unending supply of the stuff, and they ate it readily enough.
We grew long-bearded, and sallow-skinned from lack of sunlight. But we bathed regularly in the river—until the men began to encounter leeches whenever they entered the slow-flowing water. Thereafter, we left off bathing altogether and contented ourselves with washing only.
Cynan grew restive. As the days progressed, he urged us to greater speed and complained with increasing regularity that we were not making enough effort to get clear of the forest.
“Be easy, brother,” Bran advised. “Nothing will be gained by pushing too hard.”
“It is taking too long,” Cynan grumped. “We should have come through this forest long ago.”
“Do not lose heart,” I told him. “We will come to the end soon.”
Cynan turned on me. “My wife is taken too! Or have you forgotten? I tell you she is no less a queen than your precious Goewyn!”
“I know, brother,” I soothed. “Please, be—”
“You think I do not care for my wife?” he challenged. “You think, because I say nothing, that I do not speak her name in my heart with every step?”
“I am sure you do, Cynan. Calm yourself. We will find them both.” I put my hand on his arm. He knocked it away, glared at me, and then stormed off.
Some time later—two days or ten, I no longer knew—we stepped from the forest into a clearing bounded by the high rock bluffs of the river. And in the center of the clearing on the left bank stood a city, ruined and deserted, carved into the red stone bank. I call it a city, though closer scrutiny soon revealed that it was a single structure: an enormous palace with hundreds upon hundreds of dwelling places, halls, walls, columns, courts, and shrines, all heaped together in a haphazard jumble of red stone.
We came upon it suddenly and stood blinking in the light of a faded day. It was the first we had seen of the sky for days uncounted, and all we could do was to stand and stare, our hands shielding our sore eyes. And then, quivering with the shock of the sun and sky and easy air, we crept cautiously forward—as if the strange red palace were a mirage that might vanish if we glanced away.
But the structure was solid stone from the countless pinnacles of its high-peaked rooftops to its many-chambered foundations. Most of the columns were broken and the roofs collapsed; the round eye-socket windows stood empty and unlit. However, by far the greater part of the palace remained intact. Carved figures of animals and birds were placed in the pediments, but we saw no human figures represented. The edifice had been constructed to front the river. Indeed, a single round entrance like that of the high tower, but larger by far, opened onto a terrace which ended in a wide sweep of steps descending directly to the black water. The stone-carved walls flowed in curves, bending into one anoth
er like limbs, merging without joints or straight lines. This gave the place a disturbingly organic quality that Cynan identified at once. “Aye, see it lying there—like a great red lizard asprawl on the riverbank.”
“Indeed,” agreed Alun Tringad. “It is a sleeping lizard. Let it lie.”
Nothing moved; no sound could be heard among the rubble. The red palace was as lifeless and deserted as the tower we had seen before, and just as old. And yet, whatever power preserved the structure had not entirely abandoned it. For clearly the palace still exerted dominion over the forest, or else the red stone would have been overgrown long ago.
Something yet lingered that prevented the vegetation from invading and reclaiming the clearing and its deserted edifice, root and branch.
At the far end of the terrace, the broken remains of what appeared to be a wide, stone-paved road led from the city at an angle away from the river. Tegid observed the red palace for a long time, and then counseled us to move on, saying, “It is an evil place. We will find nothing but misery here.”
Alas! We should have heeded his wise counsel.
26
YR GYREM RUA
Even in the short time we had been contemplating the ruin, daylight began to dwindle; it would be dusk soon, and night followed swiftly. We would have to find a place to make camp, and I was determined not to spend another night in the forest. So we decided to pass by the palace to the road beyond and see where it might lead.
In two tight lines, we moved out onto the terrace. Strange to feel solid rock under foot, stranger still to hear the hollow echo of hoofs after the smothering silence of the forest. We crept slowly across the wide terrace, every step ringing in our ears, reverberating from a hundred angled walls.
Bran, leading the procession, reached the center of the terrace— midway between the river steps and the gaping entrance to the palace. I saw him look to this door, turn, and stop. He raised his hand for those behind him to halt. “I saw something move in there,” he explained as Cynan and I joined him.
I looked to the entrance—round as a wheel, and five times the height of a man, it was also dark as a pit; I could not imagine how he saw anything inside.
“Let us move on,” I said and was still looking at the empty doorway when we heard the cry: plaintive, pitiable, the wail of a lost and frightened child.
“Mo anam,” muttered Cynan, “there is a babe in there.”
We stared at one another for a moment, wondering what to do. “We cannot pass by and leave the poor thing,” Cynan said. “It is not right.”
Loath as I was to agree with him, I conceded to a quick investigation. “It must be swift indeed,” Tegid warned. “It will be dark soon. We dare not linger.”
Leaving Scatha and the rest to guard the horses, Bran, Emyr, Garanaw, Tegid, Cynan, and I prepared torches and crept toward the red palace, watching the vacant entrance as we drew nearer. We saw nothing, and the cry did not come again.
At the threshold, we paused to light the torches and entered an enormous, empty hall. Surprisingly, the room was many times larger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. The reason for this, Tegid immediately discovered. “It is all one,” he pointed out. “There is but a single chamber.”
All the hundreds of windows that, on the outside, appeared to open onto separate rooms, served to shed light on this single gigantic chamber. Even so, there was precious little illumination, just enough to see that we stood on a ledge with wide, shallow steps leading down to a floor somewhere below. Neither the floor below nor the roof above could be seen from where we stood, and the light of our torches did little to challenge the darkness of the place.
The air inside the hall was dank and cold—colder than outside. We stood and listened, our breath hanging in clouds around us. Hearing nothing, we started down the steps, shoulder to shoulder, torches held high. Each step stirred an echo that flitted like a bat into the darkness.
“A cheerless house, this,” muttered Bran, his voice ringing in the vast emptiness.
“Even with a blaze the hearth would be cold,” added Emyr.
“Still, I would welcome a fire now,” Garanaw said. “The darkness here is dark indeed.”
Six steps down, we came onto a wide landing, and then six more to another landing, and a final six to the floor, which was covered with six-sided glazed black tiles. The tiles glistened with moisture and made a slick surface for our feet as we moved slowly to the center of the hall where the firepit would be.
“Your hopes for a welcome fire are in vain, Garanaw,” remarked Tegid. “There is no hearth.”
No hearthstone, no fire-ring, nor even a brazier such as we had seen in the tower. The room, as far as we could tell, was devoid of any furniture whatsoever. Instead, where the hearth would have been, there was a mosaic picked out in small red, white and black tesserae depicting the same winged serpent emblem we had seen in the tower. The serpent here, however, was less stylized and somewhat more lifelike: sinuous red coils shimmering in the torchlight, red eyes glaring, reptilian wings spread behind its flat head. And there was a word spelled out in red tiles beneath it, which I took to be the creature’s name.
I looked at the image traced upon the floor and my silver hand sent a warning tingle up my arm.
My eyes were better adjusted to the dark now, and I saw that the great room was oval-shaped, its many-peaked roof supported by rows of tapering columns whose tops were lost to the blackness above. Directly opposite the entrance door across the expanse of floor, a second round doorway, nearly as large as the first, opened into the smooth rock face of the bank.
We all proceeded warily across the dark room to this second doorway, which proved to be the opening of a deep cave—elaborately dressed with fine finished stone without, but nothing more than a ragged rock tunnel inside. It came to me that the whole palace was but a façade built to conceal or, more likely, to enshrine this single cave entrance.
“Well,” said Cynan, eyeing the tunnel doubtfully, “we have come this far. Will we turn back without seeing what lies beyond?”
Up spoke Tegid. “Do you yet wonder what lies beyond?”
“Enlighten us, bard,” Cynan said. “I cannot guess.”
“Can you not? Very well then, I will tell you. It is the creature whose image we have seen since coming to the Foul Land.”
“The beast set in the floor back there?” wondered Cynan, gesturing to the empty hall behind us.
“The same,” said Tegid. “It is in my mind that this hole leads to the lair of the beast. Yr Gyrem Rua is its name.”
“The Red Serpent?” murmured Cynan. The warriors glanced around warily. “Do you know this beast?”
“Unless I am much mistaken,” the bard replied, “the creature within is that which the Learned call the Red Serpent of Oeth.” He hesitated. “Some call it Wyrm.”
“Wyrm . . .” Bran muttered, glancing over his shoulder.
Sick dread broke like a wave over me; I understood now why the palace consisted of just one room, and why the bronze men of the high tower revered the image of the serpent: it was their god; they sacrificed to it. And this was Yr Gyrem Rua’s shrine and sanctuary.
“Let us leave this place while we may,” urged Bran.
With that, we turned from the door, retreating back across the floor by three paces, when the cry sounded again—the thin, tremulous whimper of a forlorn and miserable infant.
“The child has wandered in there,” gasped Cynan, hurrying back to the cave entrance. Peering inside, he called to the child, waited, and when he received no reply, started into the tunnel.
I snatched him by the cloak and pulled him back. “You cannot go in there alone.”
“Then come with me, brother.”
I turned back to the others. “Stay here,” I said. “We will take a quick look inside.”
Trembling in every limb, Cynan and I started down the tunnel, the light of our torches flickering on the damp red stone. We moved cautiously on, but encountered l
ittle more than a strong smell: musty and somewhat sweet, but with a ripe gamey taint, like rancid oil or fat.
Fifty paces more and I saw a glistening mass lying on the floor of the passage. My metal hand went suddenly cold, and I stopped in my tracks.
“What is that?” breathed Cynan, gesturing with his torch.
I stepped closer and held my torch nearer. My stomach tightened and my mouth filled with bile. I gagged and choked.
Lying in a pool of vomitus on the floor before us was the undigested head of one of our missing scouts. The flesh was badly corrupted, the face horribly marred; even so, I recognized the man.
Cynan made to brush past me, but I swung toward him and put my hand in the center of his chest. “Brother, no . . . It is Gweir.”
He strained forward, anger, sorrow, and disbelief battling across his features. He glanced over my shoulder. “Saeth du!” he cursed and turned away.
There was nothing to be done for Gweir, so we moved on, the odor growing more potent with every step. In a little while the passage turned and widened out somewhat, forming a low grotto. The stench hit me full force as I stepped into this inner chamber; it rocked me back on my heels, but I choked back the bile and staggered ahead. Cynan entered quickly after me.
In the center of the grotto was a hole in the rock floor. The rough edges of the hole were smoothed to an almost polished luster. It was not difficult to guess how the rough stone had gained its glassy sheen.
Scattered on the floor of this hateful chamber were various body parts of our missing warriors and their mounts: a foot still in its buskin, a mangled horse’s head and several hooves, jawbones, human and animal teeth, the stripped rib cage and spine of a horse. There were other, older bones too, skulls and broken shanks scoured clean and brown with age—sacrificial victims of a distant age.
I could not bear the sight and turned away. The eerie childlike whine sounded again, rising from the depths below, and I realized that it was the Wyrm itself, not a child, that made the cry. Tightening my grip on the torch, I stepped toward the hole. A blade of ice stabbed up into my arm. Cynan caught me by the shoulder. “Stay back,” he barked in a sharp whisper, pulling me roughly away. “We can do nothing here.”