Night Birds' Reign(130)

“Just give me a few moments,” he said hollowly, closing his eyes against the pain in his head.

“What did you see, Cai?” Achren asked, apparently too impatient to give him his few moments.

“Achren,” Rhiannon pointed out, “Cai just asked for a few moments. I assumed he meant a few moments of silence.”

Achren snorted. “Don’t be such a baby, Cai.”

Cai sighed. He liked Achren very much, in spite of the fact that she was tough as old boots and expected everyone else to be the same. “You’ll understand better when it happens to you,” Cai said, gingerly holding his head in his hands. He thought that his head might very well burst, but then the pain subsided to a dull ache. At last he lifted his head and eyed them all as they clustered around him.

“Can you talk yet?” Gwydion asked as he handed a dripping water skin to Cai.

Cai gratefully took a drink of cool water from the River Mawddoch.

“Here,” Rhiannon said, handing him a small bottle of some unidentifiable liquid.

“What is it?” Cai asked even as he swallowed a portion of the contents.

“A tisane of feverfew. It will help your headache.”

“If you have done playing doctor, Rhiannon,” Gwydion said, “perhaps we can get on with it.”

“I am a doctor,” Rhiannon flared. “I don’t know what you meaning by ‘playing,’ but—”

“Please,” Cai begged, his head still aching. “Not now.”

Rhiannon subsided with a flush on her cheeks, her green eyes hard as emeralds. Gwydion merely looked at her coolly then turned back to Cai.

“I saw the Battle of Naid Ronwen,” Cai said quietly.

“Everything?” Angharad asked. “Even—”

Cai nodded. “Everything; even when Ronwen jumped into the river with Sabra in her arms. I saw Queen Gwynledyr come down from the hills with her warband. Eadwulf, coward that he was, he ran, leaving his companions behind. But Gwynledyr rode him down and killed him. She took her torque back, and rode away without a backward glance. And she wept when they brought back the bodies of Ronwen and Sabra. I saw it all.”

“And what might that mean?” Trystan asked Gwydion. “What clue is there in that?”

“I don’t know,” Gwydion answered with a frown.

“Oh, that wasn’t the clue,” Cai said wearily. “It was what I saw next.”

“And what was that?” Achren asked impatiently.

“I saw a man ride up to the willow tree over there,” Cai went on, pointing to the trees on the riverbank. “I think it was Bran—he wore the Dreamer’s Torque.”

“Ah,” Gwydion said with satisfaction. “Of course. What did he do?”

“He took something from his saddlebag. I couldn’t tell what, it was wrapped in cloth. Then he placed it in the tree trunk.”

Amatheon had risen to his feet and was inspecting the tree Cai had indicated. “I don’t see any kind of hole in this trunk,” he said, baffled.

“He Shape-Moved,” Cai said. “He opened the trunk then closed it when he was done.”

Gwydion, the only one of them able to Shape-Move walked over to the willow tree. “About here?” he asked Cai, placing his hand on the trunk.

“A little lower down and to the left,” Cai replied.

Gwydion placed his hand where Cai indicated, and the bark of the tree parted like water beneath the Dreamer’s palm. He reached in to the trunk and grasped something, pulling it out into the light. Before he examined his find he again placed his hand on the trunk, then sealed up the fissure he had made.

He walked back to them, Amatheon by his side, as he gently held something in his hands. The cloth had disintegrated long ago and the thing he held flashed brightly in the sun. Cai rose to his feet with the rest of them, his headache subsiding, and joined the others as they crowded around Gwydion.

The thing Gwydion held in his hands was flat and made of bright, untarnished gold. It was formed in an arc, and sapphires winked on the rounded side. On the upper right-hand side the words “Seek the” glimmered, outlined in emeralds. On the lower, pointed portion of the arc was a cluster of pearls outlined with rubies in a second, tinier arc. Words were etched in the golden arc and they were silent as Gwydion read them out loud:

Death comes unannounced,

Abruptly he may thwart you;

No one knows his features,

Nor the sound of his tread approaching.

“Bran’s words surely?” Rhiannon asked softly.

“No doubt written at High King Lleu’s death,” Gwydion said quietly. “How Bran suffered at the death of his friend.”

“This must be a piece of the broken circle that the poem mentions,” Trystan said.