The Paradise War Read online

  “We will not reach Sycharth in time,” I reflected.

  “No,” Tegid agreed, “we will not reach the caer in time for Beltain.”

  “Where will we hold the celebration?”

  “At one of the sacred places along the trail,” he replied, “and there are several. There is a mound and standing stone near here. We should reach it the day after tomorrow. That will serve.”

  Yes, I thought, that will serve. For the next two days, I watched the prince and his coterie closely—and knew that I was being watched in turn. In the early evening of the second day as we set about making camp for the night, Simon approached me while I watered the horses.

  “What do you have for me?” He was too eager. Ambition burned bright in the prince and his champion. I knew I had them.

  “Not here! Tegid is suspicious. He must not see us together,” I said harshly, glancing nervously over my shoulder. “There is a mound and standing stone just ahead of us on the trail. We will pass by it tomorrow. Meet me there at dawn.”

  He was accustomed to such secrecy and accepted it without protest. “Dawn, then,” he agreed. “At the standing stone.”

  “And come alone,” I warned. “The fewer people who know about this, the better.”

  “Do not give me orders!” he growled.

  We parted then, and I walked back to my place at Tegid’s campfire. We ate our meager meal in silence and unrolled our oxhides upon the damp ground when we finished. I was unsettled in my mind and in my heart, but Tegid seemed not to notice; no doubt he had more than enough on his mind.

  That night, well before dawn, I rose from an uneasy sleep, took up my spear, pulled my cloak around me, and crept away. I stayed well away from the other campfires, skirting the sleeping places of the prince and his warriors until I struck the trail once again. With a setting moon to guide me, I hastened along the path. I dared not think about what lay ahead, nor what I must do.

  I followed the twisting path, dodging low-hanging branches and the dark boles of trees. As I made my solitary way through the forest, I began to fear that Simon would not come alone, that he would bring the prince with him. If he did, my plan would fail. Eventually I came within sight of the meeting place. As the sun lightened the east, I walked impatiently around the large, grassy mound with its slender finger of standing stone jutting from the top. Now I began to worry that Simon would not come at all.

  He did not disappoint me. Simon’s ambition was great enough to ensure that he would do exactly as I said. I saw him approaching through the dim predawn light and forced myself to draw three deep, steadying breaths. I raised my spear in greeting.

  He smiled his sly, superior smile when he saw me. “Well, I am here. What do you have for me?”

  “Have you spoken to the prince?”

  “I have,” he replied, striding confidently nearer. “He will show his gratitude when the time comes. You will see.”

  “Good.” I glanced quickly skyward. It was the time-between-times. “Walk with me,” I said.

  I could see Simon thought this an odd request, but he obeyed. “This has not been easy,” I began slowly, moving around the base of the mound. “Tegid can be very difficult, as you know. He is not one to openly discuss what he is thinking. He is a bard—you know how they are.”

  He made a derisive sound low in this throat. “Go on,” he said.

  “I just wanted you to know that it has not been easy to get information from him. There were certain difficulties.”

  “I told you Meldron stands ready to give you the reward you deserve,” Simon said, suddenly suspicious. “What else do you want?”

  “We will come to that. Now listen, this is what I found out: as soon as we reach Sycharth, Tegid is going to summon a gathering of bards to help him decide what to do.”

  “Why? Does he not know what to do?” He halted, his brow lowering skeptically.

  “You do not understand,” I said bluntly. I kept walking; Simon followed, and we completed the first circuit around the mound. “Meldryn Mawr must be buried first. It takes time to choose a new king.”

  “How much time?”

  “That is not important.” I kept walking.

  “How much time?” Simon demanded.

  “Twenty days at least,” I said, choosing a number from thin air. “Once the bards have assembled—and we do not even know how many are left—there are preparations to be made, rituals and ceremonies that must be performed.”

  “We know all this,” Simon replied in a clumsy attempt to bully me. “What else?”

  I stopped and turned to him, gripping my spear tight between my hands. “If you know so much,” I growled, “why accept my help at all? Do you want to learn what I found out, or not?”

  “I am here,” he replied tersely. “I am listening.”

  I started walking once more, feigning a sullen silence. The ruse worked. He followed. “What else did you learn?” he asked in a mollifying tone.

  “Well,” I replied slowly, “I think that Tegid will wait until all the bards have assembled, and then he will delay the choosing.”

  “Delay? Why would he delay choosing?”

  “There is an ancient law,” I answered, drawing out my words, “which allows the bard to gather all the men of the clan to a hosting for the kingship.”

  “What manner of hosting?” This intrigued Simon, as I knew it would.

  “That is for the bards to decide,” I bluffed, completing the second sunwise circuit of the mound and beginning the third. “Usually, there are numerous martial contests—trials of strength, skill at arms, horsemanship— and tests of courage and mental agility.” I paused to let these words sink in, and then said, “The king will be chosen from among those who fare best in the competitions,” I told him, “not just the princes and chieftains.”

  Simon bristled. “Why should a new ruler be so chosen when there is an heir with royal blood, one who is prepared to take the crown that is his by right?” He set his jaw in defiance of my words, and I knew I had read him right. I knew what he had done, and I could guess how he had done it.

  Simon had inflamed Prince Meldron’s ambition with talk of birthright succession: kingship passing from father to son, through bloodlines rather than through the merit of the individual. Simon, whose entire life was a testament to unmerited privilege, would champion the idea. And he would have no trouble at all convincing the weak and greedy prince that he was entitled to his father’s throne.

  Yet this is not the way of Albion: kings are chosen from among the clan’s best men; and the bards, who retain the power to confer sovereignty, do the choosing.

  Had he won over Prince Meldron with his easy talk of a kingship that could be gained without merit, without the blessing of the bard? A kingship that came through the blood of birth, not the blood of sacrifice?

  I did not know who killed the Phantarch; indeed, I could not guess how he had even been found. But I was absolutely certain of one fact: Simon, who had forced his way into this world, had brought with him alien and deadly ideas. His heresies had caused the deaths of Ollathir, the Phantarch, the king, and countless thousands who had been destroyed by Nudd and his hordes. He had blithely and selfishly sought to take what could not be his, to create an order that would serve his selfish interest.

  He knew and cared nothing about true kingship. He knew nothing of the Song or the Cythrawl. Or of the host of powers and forces loosed by his words of treachery—even now! He cared only for himself. His greed had almost destroyed Albion, and it had to be stopped. It was time for Simon to leave.

  We walked a bit further, completing our third sunwise circuit of the mound. The sky lightened to sunrise, glowing softly pink. He was silent for some moments, thinking through what I told him. “Tegid’s hosting,” he said at last, “when will it begin?”

  “It must take place in the space between one new moon and the next, sometime after Beltain and before Amhain,” I told him.

  “Beltain is soon,” Simon observed. />
  “It is,” I confirmed. “Very soon.”

  I stepped quickly to one side, leveling my spear upon Simon in the same swift motion. He glanced at the blade and made to push it aside. “Stand easy,” I told him. “It is over, Simon. You are going back.”

  “Going back?” he wondered in genuine bewilderment.

  “Home, Simon. You do not belong here. This is not your world. You have done great harm here, and it has to stop.” He drew breath to protest, but I did not let him speak. “Turn around,” I ordered, motioning toward the mound with the tip of the spear.

  “You would not dare hurt me,” he scoffed, throwing back his cloak and reaching for his sword. With a quick flick of the spear, I nicked his upper arm. He looked at the blood welling from the scratch and became angry. “You will die for that!”

  “Turn around, Simon,” I commanded.

  Simon glared and hesitated. “You want it for yourself! You think yourself a king.”

  “Move!” I jabbed at him with the spear and stepped closer. “I am right behind you.”

  “You will regret this,” he spat with cool menace. “I promise you will die regretting this.”

  “I will take that chance,” I said, stepping near and pressing the sharp blade of my spear into his ribs. “But you are going back where you belong. Now move!”

  He turned and stepped stiffly to the dark cavelike entrance yawning open at the base of the mound. With a last murderous look at me, he bent his head and entered.

  I did not spare a moment celebrating my success. The Otherworld portal would not remain open long. Simon was right, I was already regretting what I had done—but not for the reason he suggested. I glanced around fair Albion one last time and realized how much I had come to love it, how much I would miss it all. Sadly, and with extreme reluctance, I leaned my spear against the mound. Then, breathing a silent farewell, I bent my head and stepped into the dark entrance.

  39

  THE RETURN

  The interior of the mound was dark as a womb and suffocatingly close. I could not see Simon, nor could I hear him or sense his presence. He had already crossed over. Fearing the portal would close at any moment, and that I would miss my chance to return—and, having missed it, that I would not be able to make myself go through with it the next time—I took a deep breath and stepped into the howling void that separates the two worlds.

  A wild blast of wind tore at me, and I teetered upon that narrow span—the sword bridge. I flung out my arms for balance and slid my foot forward over the blade’s edge, ignoring the wind’s heart-tearing scream and the dizzying sensation of balancing above an infinite and invisible void.

  The sword-blade bridge beneath me bit into the soles of my feet as I slid them carefully along. The merciless wind ripped at me from every direction. I fought to breathe, fought against the paralyzing fear swimming at me out of the wind-blasted darkness. Gathering the last of my quickly failing nerve, I took two more sliding steps along the sword bridge.

  I felt as if my clothing was being rent to shreds and stripped from my body, as if my flesh was being pared to the bone by the searing wind. Courage, I told myself, it is soon over.

  I took another step.

  My foot trod empty space, and I fell . . . weightless, stomach-wrenching, plunging into endless night, my lower lip clamped between my teeth to keep from screaming . . . falling through time and space, spinning through multilayered realms of possibility, through Earth ages that never were and potential futures that never would be, plunging through that unspeakably rich, elemental reservoir of the transcendent universe. I fell, landing hard on my left side. I lay on the packed dirt floor for a moment—until my head stopped spinning— and then opened my eyes on a dim, gray limestone interior.

  I flexed my arms and legs experimentally but detected no broken bones. I raised myself up slowly and climbed to my feet. A thin, cold light entered the hive-shaped interior of the cairn. Simon was nowhere to be seen. Stepping to the low entrance, I gripped the cold stones at the edge of the hole and pulled myself out into the manifest world once more.

  It was a winter dawn, and freezing. The sun was new risen in the east. A grainy pall of snow covered the ground. The sky through the trees above the glen showed ashen and pale. I emerged from the cairn into a world immeasurably forlorn and futile. My first thought was that I had come to the wrong place, that I had crossed over into a shadowland, a slight, sickly reflection of the world I had left behind. But then I saw it: the canvas tent of the Society of Metaphysical Archaeologists.

  And there, sitting on a camp stool, drinking steaming coffee over a small fire before the tent was a man I recognized—in the way one recognizes someone from a dream—his name . . . his name . . . Weston. It was Weston, the director of the excavations, and across from him Professor Nettleton. I saw them and knew I had come home.

  The realization settled on my shoulders like a dead weight.

  For the world was no longer the same. Frail, colorless, weary, the world before me displayed a tentative, temporary appearance. Everything— trees, rocks, earth, and sky and dull winter sun—seemed not to exist as much as merely to linger—like a fast-fading memory. There was no feeling of import or solidity, nothing at all substantial about the world I saw. Ephemeral, impermanent, it looked as if it were a transitory phenomenon—a mirage that might dissolve at any moment.

  And I could see that Weston and Professor Nettleton had changed as well, subtly but perceptibly: their features were coarser, their bodies smaller and more ungainly. They appeared slighter, less physically present somehow. There was a peculiar ghostlike quality to them, as if they clung to corporeal existence by the slenderest of threads, as if the atoms making up their bodies might relinquish their cohesive attraction and go flying apart at the least provocation.

  Even as I stood looking on, the man Weston rose abruptly and ducked into the tent. As soon as he was out of sight, I lurched forward and the movement caught Nettleton’s eye. His gaze shifted. An expression of frank amazement appeared on his owlish face.

  “Oh, no!” he whispered sharply.

  He clearly did not recognize me. Why should he? I was dressed like something out of the Mabinogion—from the silver torc at my throat to the leather buskins on my feet, breecs, siarc, and bright-checked cloak. He was waiting, yes; but he was obviously not expecting a Celtic warrior to come shuffling out of the cairn.

  I stepped cautiously forward, aware of the disturbing effect my appearance was having on him. “Do not be afraid,” I said.

  Nettles gaped at me in uncomprehending shock. Thinking he had not heard me, I repeated myself, and only then realized that I was speaking ancient Celt. It took me a moment, and not a little effort, to find the English words.

  “Please,” I said, “do not be afraid.” My voice sounded harsh and clumsy in my ears.

  If my Celtic speech puzzled him, my native tongue terrified him. Professor Nettleton, trembling like a terrier, put out his hands as if to hold me at arm’s length away from him.

  “It—it’s all right,” I said. “I have returned.”

  The professor peered at me through his round-rimmed spectacles in the wan, uncertain light. “Who are you?”

  I cannot describe the devastation wrought by those three innocent words. Sharper than spears, they stabbed me through. The gorge rose in my throat. I gasped and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

  “Who . . . are . . . you?” the professor repeated slowly, adopting the carefully exaggerated speech one would use in speaking to a foreigner, or a madman. Then he said the same words again, in Welsh, which only made me feel more of an alien being.

  It was a moment before I could utter a sound. “I—I am . . . I am . . . ,” I stammered. The words clotted on my tongue. I could not make myself speak my name.

  In dawning realization, the professor edged forward. “Lewis?” he asked softly. “Is that you?”

  Indeed, the professor’s question was better than he knew. Who was I? Was I Lewis
, the Oxford graduate student who had been sucked into an impossible Otherworldly adventure? Or was I Llew, the changeling who stood with one foot in both worlds?

  Nettles crept closer, darting a quick glance to the tent behind him.

  “Lewis?”

  “Y-yes . . . it is Lew—Lewis,” I said thickly, stumbling over my own name. Wrapping my tongue around the language was an effort.

  “I have been watching,” Nettles said. He stepped closer, his eyes taking in my appearance—he gazed at me as if at a wonder. “I have been waiting.”

  “I’ve returned,” I told him. “I’ve come back.”

  “Look at you,” he breathed in an awed voice. His eyes glowed like a child’s at Christmas. “Look at you!” He raised a trembling hand to touch my cloak. “Why . . . it—it’s miraculous!”

  I had encountered astonishment before, and the same expression of awestricken disbelief—on the faces of the warriors on the wall and in the eyes of the gathering in Meldryn Mawr’s hall. I knew my sojourn in the Otherworld had changed me; and judging from the reactions of so many, my contact with the Singing Stones in the Phantarch’s chamber had changed me still more. But standing in the chill, thin light of this shabby, pathetic world, I understood at last: I was not simply changed, I was transformed.

  I spread my arms and looked down the length of my body. My hands were hard, my arms muscled and strong; my legs were straight, powerful, my torso lean, tight, and my chest broader, my shoulders heavier. I reached a hand to my face and felt a straighter nose, a stronger chin, and more forceful jaw. But the change was more than physical. There was the aura, the glory reflected from my encounter with the Song.

  Lewis was gone. Llew stood in his place.

  “What has happened?” Nettles asked, an eager light animating his face. “Did you find Simon? Did you stop him? What was it like?”

  How could I tell him what I knew? How could I even begin to describe the Otherworld, let alone put to words all that had happened?