He remembered the look on Awst’s face—the look of surprise that was frozen there in that moment when his wife murdered him. And the smile on Celemon’s dead face that must have been there when she stepped into the bloody water, slashed her wrists, and arranged herself in her dead husband’s arms.
GWYDION REMEMBERED IT all. And remembering began to weep as the firelight turned his tears to blood in the Awenyddion’s Tower in the fortress of Caer Dathyl, which stood in proud and lonely silence at the top of the world.
Chapter Eight
Coed Aderyn Kingdom of Prydyn, Kymru Onnen Mis, 494
Calan Morynion, Disglair Wythnos—late afternoon
Rhiannon ur Hefeydd var Indeg swore as she stubbed her toe on a tree root and almost fell face down into the snow. She felt awkward trying to keep her balance while carrying a dead rabbit in one hand and a spray of snowdrops in the other. Taking a tighter grip on the snare around the rabbit’s neck, she pushed onward through the snowdrifts.
She felt irritated and unsettled, out of sorts today. And she knew why. Today was Calan Morynion; the festival that honored Nantsovelta, the goddess of the Moon and Lady of the Waters, the goddess most revered by the Dewin. And that was the problem. Although Rhiannon was herself Dewin, she had turned her back on that part of herself long ago. The festival evoked far too much for her to enjoy it.
Today was also her name day. Today she was thirty-five years old and, as time went by in the quiet forest of Coed Aderyn, she tended more and more to dread the anniversary of her birth. It always reminded her that time was passing. She suspected—she knew—that she was wasting the life she had been given.
Worse still, in the past few weeks she had begun to feel uneasy. Someone, somewhere, was thinking quite hard about her these days. The feeling was nebulous, not like the time when she first came to the woods. Eleven years ago all of Kymru had been looking for her. How irritating it had been to hear her name Spoken on the Wind over and over by telepaths up and down Kymru. It created such a din that she had headaches for months, even after they had stopped calling for her.
But this was different. It was as though someone was looking for her quietly, so as not to alarm her. Stalking her, perhaps.
Pushing these unsettling thoughts away, she continued to make her way between the dense trees to her home. She had told Gwen to stay inside while she was gone, but Rhiannon had little hope that her daughter would do as she was told.
Although the wood was silent, and she knew she was alone here, Rhiannon moved quietly for it was now her second nature. That had been hard to learn at the beginning, when she had first come here, bringing her child and her broken heart with her. They had almost starved that first winter. She had been forced to learn how to walk the woods quietly, to stalk and kill the wild animals in order to keep herself and Gwen alive. She had done it, for when the choice was learn or die, learning came quickly.
Once or twice a year, as need demanded, she visited the tiny village of Dillys to the west, just at the edge of the wood. There she would trade rabbit and deerskins for grain and other necessities. In the first years she had always made the journey with her heart in her throat, knowing that her description was being circulated and fearful that she would be recognized. But they never so much as blinked when they saw her and the baby. Of course, the people of Dillys, like those of other tiny villages, were closed-mouthed with outsiders.
Her doeskin boots, which she had patiently waterproofed by rubbing candle wax into them, made no sound as she glided across the snow. Her leather tunic and trousers were white; blending in with the snow-covered landscape. Her white winter wool cloak was hooded and lined with rabbit fur. The hood covered her long, black hair, which was tightly braided to her scalp. Her skin was tanned, and her large green eyes were fringed with long, ink-black lashes. Her snub nose was red with cold.
As she neared her home she automatically scanned the sky. But she could see no smoke rising from the fire she knew burned in the hearth. She smiled a little, for she was proud of her hard work. Realizing that even the dullest traveler would wonder about smoke rising from a lone hill, she had patiently hollowed out a fissure in the cave where she lived and set the hearth into the side of the cave itself. The smoke was drawn out through the fissure and into the series of connecting caves that went far back into the earth.
The opening to the cave under the hill was covered by a shimmering waterfall, which fed into a tiny pool. Even in winter the waterfall did not freeze, and the pool was never fully covered with ice. She made her way around the pool and climbed the wet rocks, slipping behind the waterfall and entering the hidden cave.