Night Birds' Reign(15)

To Gwydion it seemed as if the trees themselves were huddled around the people of Tegeingl, as though the people needed their protection tonight. And perhaps they did. Never had a festival made him uneasy before. He tried to dismiss these thoughts, but he was tense and wary. He knew his uneasiness was, in part, due to his dream the night before. The rest of his uneasiness could probably be attributed to the fact that he was well on his way to being very drunk indeed.

He had refused to join the hunt for the stag earlier that day. After his dream the thought of hunting anything at all fairly turned his stomach. Instead, he had remained in Caer Gwynt, sitting by the hearth in the Great Hall, slowly drinking goblet after goblet of rich, blood-red wine, wondering dully why he couldn’t seem to get drunk enough to pass out. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw the eagle in Cerridwen’s hands, with chains on its talons and hopelessness in its eyes.

And an accusation. An accusation he deserved. For he had promised the eagle to protect it from those that hunted it. But he had not. He had surrendered the eagle to the Wild Hunt. In doing so, had himself betrayed the animal.

He knew what it was to be betrayed. He knew what it was to trust in someone and to have that trust destroyed by a faithless heart. He knew the bitter taste of treachery, and yet he had meted it out himself in his dream.

And so he drank.

How was it, he thought, as he had sipped his wine, that Amatheon could seem to live with what had happened to Da so much better than Gwydion himself could? How could Amatheon rise above it all, retaining his calm, his good nature, and his warm heart? Gwydion did not know how this could be, except that it had always been that way, even from the time they were children. Gwydion supposed that perhaps, when he was very young, his heart had been warm and merry. Perhaps. If so, he did not remember. But it might have been so—before the damage had been done.

He remembered the icy pain in his heart that the shadow had dealt him in his first dream, and wondered, yet again, what thing the darkness would do that could cause his heart to be any colder than it already was.

He had not really thought it possible.

Later, when the hunt had returned, he had refused to go with the men to cut down the tree for the festival. Amatheon had given him a keen glance but Uthyr had only shrugged and led thirty men to the forest outside the town walls to cut down the tree.

When the men had returned, carrying the seventy-foot alder tree across their shoulders, they set it up in the marketplace. At last giving in to Amatheon’s urging Gwydion had gone to see them set up the tree. With much straining and swearing, they had maneuvered it into position and dropped the trunk into the hole that had been dug for it. The women of the city had moved in to decorate the tree, hanging long ribbons of orange and purple—the colors of Cerrunnos and Cerridwen. Then Uthyr himself had climbed up and set the crown of orange marigold and white rowan flowers at the topmost branch.

Amid the laughter, the teasing, the bright noise, Gwydion had stood silent and withdrawn. The rumor that the Dreamer had been having dreams that were not to his liking traveled swiftly through the town. People were uneasy, and gave swift glances to Gwydion that he did not see. But no one had the nerve to brave his forbidding aspect and they left him alone, asking no questions.

Now the lights of hundreds of torches flickered over the faces of the people in the grove. The feast was over, the stag had been eaten, jokes had been told and songs had been sung. The crowd waited patiently for Griffi to begin the ceremony of Calan Llachar Eve, celebrated at the time of the new moon in the month of Gwernan when winter was truly gone and spring had begun.

Four fires made up of different woods had been laid out in the four quarters of the huge clearing. Gwydion stood now, along with about two hundred other people, at the unlit fire made of rowan wood on the south side of the grove. Later, when bidden by Griffi, he would light the fire as part of the ceremony.

The unlit fire on the north side of the clearing consisted of birch wood. The Bard, Susanna, would light that fire, which symbolized the element of air. She stood there now, talking quietly to Cynan. She had not spoken one word to Gwydion since the night before, but her eyes had followed him, questioning his preoccupied silence.

At the east of the grove another unlit fire was laid, this one made of the wood of the ash tree, the symbol of water. Amatheon stood there, waiting to light this fire. Surrounded by people, Amatheon joked and laughed with Duach, Uthyr’s doorkeeper, but his eyes were wary. Gwydion wondered if he, too, felt the undercurrent in the air and thought he probably did for Amatheon was very good at that.

Finally, to the west, Uthyr stood next to the pile of oak wood, the symbol of earth, that he would light. A glint of golden hair, ruddy in the torchlight, alerted Gwydion that Madoc had chosen to stand at Uthyr’s fire. Gwydion noticed that his old friend, Greid, the Master Smith of Gwynedd, was also at Uthyr’s fire. Greid’s powerful shoulders strained against his tunic. His short, gray hair bristled and his dark eyes flickered in the firelight. Uthyr was talking to Greid, but for a moment he looked Gwydion’s way, catching his eye. A small smile flashed across Uthyr’s face then was gone.