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Emrys waited for that same feeling of submersion that came when they crossed Chalon’s threshold. A tangible sensation to entering the labyrinth, but no such feeling came. Stepping into the dark hole in the greenblack man’s wall was simpler, without the press of overwhelming magic.
After the strange glow of the forest, he was surprised by the blackness of the place. Was like entering a cave. Cerys spoke his thoughts aloud, “Like a tomb.”
He held onto her arm and she steadied him. Still faint from the fit he’d had, his legs were gelatinous beneath him. But she was so solid. Powerful. Sturdy. He breathed her in. Sweat and fear and skin. A human smell. So distinct from the mossy stink of bloom and rot of the greenblack man’s home or the scent of the forest itself, already a far-off memory. The whole night drifted away from him like it happened long ago.
Again, Cerys spoke his thoughts. “Only one night.”
“Doesn’t seem possible.”
“Maybe it’s not.”
Emrys waited for her to continue as they walked forward in the darkness. Their eyes adjusted well enough as they walked through the labyrinth. The dirt ground and the mossy, living walls. Before them, the labyrinth seemed pure black, impenetrable, yet the next step found them in a greyish halflight staring into impenetrable darkness until they stepped once more to find the halflight surrounding them. “More magic,” Emrys said.
Behind them, Sian and Rhosyn spoke quietly. Emrys turned to see them but found only more blackness. Like the tunnel swallowed each of them, separating them. Instilling fear, a sense of madness, of unreality. He said, “It’s separating us.”
“What?” Cerys whispered in the dark.
It reminded him of home, of childhood, of talking with Alwyn and Aeronwen when they were meant to be sleeping. Something about the dark, about the closeness of the labyrinth. “You hear the others but when you look back you can’t see them.”
Cerys turned and he saw her frown deepen. She would not admit fear or discomfort but she held him tighter. Brought him closer. She cleared her throat and raised her voice. “Cousins.”
Sian said, “What is it?” Emrys heard her draw her sword.
“Put that away. Can you see me?”
“Can’t see a bloody thing,” Rhosyn said.
“Rhian,” she pitched her voice higher and all four of them waited a moment.
From deep in the distance, Rhian said, “Cerys?”
Relief swept through her. He saw it in her posture, the way she slumped for a moment before squaring her shoulders once more. “We’ll wait for you here. We should all go as one. Walk forward until you find me.”
Even before she finished speaking, Sian emerged from the blackness, stepping on Emrys’ foot and stumbling forward into him. She cursed and the two of them went down, with Emrys dragging Cerys down with him.
Rhosyn laughed, “Good thing you sheathed that sword, sister. We’d have a dead epileptic and a mourning cousin, otherwise.”
“Help me up,” Sian hissed.
Their legs managed to tangle, made worse by Sian’s thrashing. Her knee bashed against his shin and then thigh but Emrys giggled there in the dirt, beneath Cerys and Sian, reminded once more of the child he had been wrestling with his cousins. For all that Emrys was never a Matauc, Alwyn and Aeronwen treated him as one. Like a cousin. Like a brother. The older he got, the more he recognized the rift between his father and theirs that, no doubt, led to such closeness. Adults using their children in their petty games of dominance and control. But the bonds between him and Alwyn and Aeronwen could not be manufactured or faked.
Cerys joined his laughter as Sian struggled more, kicking and twisting away. Her cloak tangled with Cerys.
“Stop laughing!” Sian wrenched herself free of them and reached up a hand for Rhosyn to pull her up. “Well?”
Rhosyn shrugged, smiled. “Too funny.”
Sian spat and pushed herself to her feet. “I hate this place.”
Rhian emerged from the darkness and bumped into Rhosyn but they both remained on their feet, and then Alwyn blinked down at him and Cerys, giggling in the dirt, not even trying to get back up. Rhian said, “Do you hear that?”
“Can’t hear a thing over their cackling,” Sian said.
But the laughter faded at Rhian’s words. Cerys pushed herself up and then helped Emrys to his feet. Emrys didn’t so much hear as feel it. A thrumming. Like he was the string of a lute being plucked or sawed upon with a horsehair bow.
Rhian said, “His heart beats in this place.”
“The green man?” Rhosyn’s hand went to her sword pommel. “He watching us?”
Rhian shook her head and placed a small, pale hand on her cousin’s. “This place is alive with him. It’s not a labyrinth. Not for us. We should be able to walk straight and come to the edge of the forest.”
“Magic,” Sian shuddered. “I hate this.” She spat again, made the sign of the moon.
Alwyn said, “Thank you, Black Goda.”
“Goda the Loveless,” Rhian said, her voice breaking. She covered her mouth with her hand and closed her eyes tightly, releasing a single sob. But Alwyn was there, wrapping his big arms around her.
Sian’s mouth became a thin line and she shook her head, snorted, said, “Come on,” and pushed past Emrys and Cerys.
Cerys grabbed her arm. “We need to go as one. Take my hand.”
Sian didn’t argue. Took her cousin’s hand and Cerys dragged Emrys with her. He reached for Rhosyn but she yanked her hand away.
Cerys pulled Sian to a stop. “We go as one. Take his hand to keep us from getting lost.”
“Don’t need his hand,” Rhosyn said.
“We can all see right now,” Cerys said. “The blackness will swallow us and we’ll become lost if we separate.”
“He won’t let us get lost,” Rhian whispered, her voice muffled by Alwyn’s chest.
Rhosyn shook her head and grabbed Rhian’s hand, yanking her away from Alwyn in a small squeal. “Grow up, sister.”
Alwyn swallowed and took her other hand gently. “It’s all right.” Then he took a step and grabbed Emrys’ other hand and nodded.
Cerys nodded too and Sian led them into the blackness.
Though they were all clasped together, moving as one many-bodied snake through the tunnel of dirt and moss and blackness, the spaces between them seemed to expand. Alone in the dark clinging to Alwyn, to Cerys, to himself. His thoughts drifted and wandered, unable to hold onto anything in the featureless blackness. Though they walked ever onward in a straight line, the labyrinth itself seemed to twist and bend round them, as if built new with every step they took.
A night of magic. All the books he’d read had nothing to say for magic. Always against magic. They had been his beacons in the dark, leading him through the mist, or rather burning away the mist of superstition. Yet here he walked through the depths of a certain kind of magic. An unbelievable terror, this overwhelming unknowing.
So much he did not know. The university called to him for this reason. Wandering through the darkness of ignorance, of superstition, of folk wisdom hollowed him out. The world had an order. Physical laws holding existence together in a vast though barely understood system. But the tools to excavate its truths developed, just far from him. Nearly unreachable.
Had Alwyn kept to himself, he’d already be on his way. This detour into the forest, clinging to strange women to hold the terrible magic at bay, would never have happened.
Cerys. Her muscular thighs and veiny arms. Her broad shoulders and wide hips. The long tail of her braids hanging down her back, swaying as she walked. He breathed her in.
Rhian said, “Does no one hear that?”
“I hear it,” said Alwyn.
“We all hear it,” Sian said.
But Emrys did not. Without thought, he gripped Alwyn and Cerys tighter. A tide washed through him and he gasped.
Cerys stopped, halting all of them, and turned to him. “What is it?”
“Another fit, no doubt,” Sian snorted.
Emrys took a breath, “Did you feel that?”
“Come on,” Sian dragged on Cerys but she kept her feet planted.
“What was it?”
Naked. Emrys felt their eyes on him, waiting for something, for anything. Something to dismiss. His head swam and his legs wobbled as the tide rushed in once more, like he fell into deep, cold water. Gasping, he ripped his hand from Alwyn and clutched at his chest.
“His heart,” Cerys said, panic in her voice. She turned to Alwyn, “Has he a weak heart?”
Alwyn grabbed Emrys by the shoulder with his left hand, his right still holding Rhian’s. “Birdie, what is it?”
He steadied Emrys. Opening his eyes, he stared at Cerys though. “The lord of bones.”
Her eyes went wide and she looked all around them, like she’d find him there in the moss, the dirt. The stink of earth. “Where?”
Emrys shook his head. “Don’t know. Don’t even know if that’s what this was, but I—” He turned to Rhian. “What do you hear?”
Rhian cocked her head. “His song.”
“Whose?” Emrys scanned their faces. “Any of you hear it?”
“I hear it, Birdie.” Alwyn looked to the others. “But none of you.”
Rhosyn said, “Hear it too.”
Emrys said, “She hears it and you hear it through her. Might be Goda the Bard.” Then another wave swept through him, washing him to his knees. Emrys gasped, his vision slurring as his head plunged through and all sound dissolved except for that echoing call in his skull, calling him home. Beckoning him to come Home.
A blade in the dark. Pale and lusterless but razor sharp.
Strong hands gripped him, yanking him back from the drowning pool. “Emrys. Little bird. Hey.” Her voice. He knew that voice.
“I’ll carry him.” He knew that voice too.
“You’ve my sister,” snapped another voice. He knew that one too.
The hands gripping him pulled him up. Then a hardness pressed into his stomach and the ground fell away and he floated in the blackness, drifting. Weightless, bodyless. He drifted in the blackness and when he opened his eyes, he stared at his cousin, relief flooding through those familiar features.
“Birdie,” he whispered. Then his voice raised for others to hear, “He’s awake.”
Cerys said, “Can you stand?”
He nodded though he never wanted her to let him go. Wanted her only to hold him, to carry him ever after.
“He can,” Alwyn said and Cerys lowered him to his feet.
They crowded round him once more. He vibrated and shook with the thrumming call of the lord of bone. He turned to Rhian, “He knows of this place but I don’t think he can enter.”
Sian shook her head and cursed. “Nightmare.”
“Is,” Cerys said, “but we can make it out alive if we keep close.”
“Or he’ll drag death down upon us.” Sian pulled her sword from her scabbard and held it to the throat of darkness.
Rhian said, “Goda the Loveless guides us home. He’s letting me leave.” A tear escaped her brimming eyes, rolled down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. Instead, she leaned into Alwyn who wrapped a heavy arm round her, holding her close.
He said, “Can you walk, Birdie?”
Emrys smiled, shook his head. Wanted to ask why only he was struck so by this place or why he fainted in Goda’s home, but they were all fumbling in the dark, through the dark.
He’d find no answers there in the black, in the labyrinth, in the dirt and the moss. The stink of a tomb. Stale air and old dirt. Moss. Alive, its roots tendriling away into the earth, holding the walls up.
“We should keep going,” Emrys said.
Alwyn stretched forth a hand for Emrys and Cerys took his other hand and laced it through her arm. She whispered, “Keep close to me. Lean on me if you need.”
He nodded, bit down the tears rising in him.
Such simple kindness. Such a little thing. Yet it was so much. Nearly too much. Raw from the forest, from the magic battering against him, from the ebb and flow of the nightmare and the strangling reach of the lord of bone, Emrys focused on each step. One at a time, he marched with them into the darkness, towards the promise of light, of the end of night, the cessation of this long nightmare.
Cerys spoke. Quiet words. He didn’t know if she meant them for him or if she spoke simply to keep herself together, to keep from succumbing to this place. “There’s a lake past my grandfather’s land where the wind blows in just such a way that I can’t begin to explain. Perhaps because I felt it first when I was a child. My first memory, really. Stood there naked at the edge of the beach with my mother in the distance laughing as she skipped through the sand with my cousins. I watched, as if coming awake for the very first time, a smile blooming across my face, when the wind picked up and blew past me. Not a cold wind but a warm one. Summer. How I miss summer. The wind didn’t so much hit me as coil around me and seep inside of me. Felt my heart expand with love and longing and hope. And the lake glistened in the sunlight. Vast and undulating. An immense invitation, like it wanted me to be happy, to enjoy this place. Didn’t have these words back then, but it’s a memory that returns to me almost daily, whenever the darkness surrounds and weighs me down. I think to this little cherished memory and feel a flame warming me, giving me strength no matter what happens.
“For I was once a child. Happy. And that happy child stepped into the warm sand, letting my toes dig deep. Coarse and warm, wonderful. My mother called to me again and my father laughed, called me his little bird. Funny, that. To meet you here. I ran then, kicking my legs wildly as I went. It felt so strange to run in the sand, like the earth gave way every time I lifted or planted my foot. I suppose it was my first time on the beach or I would have remembered that. That child version of me, I mean. It wouldn’t have felt new, but old, the way being naked felt comfortable, typical.
“And I ran and ran and ran and when I reached my father he took my hand and my mother the other and we three galloped through the sand to the water. They lifted me high as we ran, as we reached the incoming tide, and I soared over it, laughing, kicking my legs, and they smiled and laughed with me while I stared at the sun shining for only us. When I came down to the water, it enveloped me. The cold bite of it, even in summer, took my breath and I gasped. Had my parents not been there holding me, I think I would have felt it as the claws of death claiming me. But with them there I felt no fear, only the smile hurting my cheeks and the rhythmic incoming waves washing against me until the water was too deep for me to stand. My father lifted me in his arms and we went out into the water until the waves reached his neck but my mother swam past us. She said she swam to the sun.
“She laughed when she said it, throwing it over her shoulder, but I’ve thought about those words for a long time. They fell into me and never left. She swam to the sun. Felt like that’s how I wanted my life to go. Someone racing ever onward towards the next day. Let the sun always rest upon your face. Life has taken me strange places. Sometimes dark ones. But I’ve held onto that sentence my whole life. She swam to the sun.”
Her talking steadied him. His thoughts stopped spiraling and wandering and instead focused on her voice, her words, and the child she once was. “Thank you,” he whispered to her, matching the pitch of her voice.
Gave him a squeeze and they continued on walking in the dark. Only their footsteps, their breathing gave texture to the place.
After a time, a light shined ahead and without saying a word, they all hurried to meet it. Only when they were several paces away did Rhosyn speak. “Might be a trap.”
“It’s not,” Rhian said.
Sian slowed and turned to them. “What you think?” She asked no one in particular.
Alwyn said, “Either we go forward or return to Black Goda’s house.”
Cerys turned to Rhian, “He’ll protect us?”
Rhosyn said, “She doesn’t know him! This is all guesswork. Worse, we’re trying to make sense of magic. Listen to yourself. You want magic ordered and following lines of logic, but it defies logic. Defies reason. It is, by its nature, senseless. We cannot trust this light any more than we can trust the green man’s story.”
Rhian ignored her sister. “He sings us on our way. He mourns for our passing but understands.” She wiped at her cheeks. “We go ahead.”
“He mourns only you, Rhian,” said Alwyn. The resonant depths of his voice vibrated through that place. The moss on the walls shivered along with Emrys.
He looked at his cousin for what seemed the first time in years. Alwyn’s face became so familiar to him that he no longer saw it. Rather, the impressions and memories of their lifetime entwined together, close as brothers, masked his features.
But he saw him then. A wide jaw and brow with fine black hair pulled back and away from his face, even after all they’d been through that night. His nose was straight and wide and his lower lip full while his upper was thin. High, wide cheekbones gave him a look of power. Determination. Alwyn looked down at Rhian and Emrys saw the adoration there in his intent gaze, the set of his jaw, and the sorrow touching the edge of his eyes.
“We go on,” Cerys said.
Rhosyn and Sian unsheathed their swords and took the lead. Cerys put her hand on Sian’s back and kept hold of Emrys, who held Alwyn, who held Rhian. The light before them had a bluish tint to it and when they entered it there was no warmth. Only light. The walls, though, fell away and they stood in a vast cavern. Above them, there was no clear ceiling but the stars and the moons shining down upon them. Emrys saw no change in them or their position in the sky. They had either been in the forest only a few hours or a month.
It comforted him to know he had not lost time. That he returned to a world unchanged by his time in Chalon Forest.
“What is that?” The words breathed out. A breeze from the collective mouths of everyone but Emrys.
He lowered his face from the sky and saw it.
Bathed in moonlight hueing its skin blue, an immense body sat in the distance. Its feet planted on the ground with its knees bent and raised towards the sky, its torso folded over with its head between its knees and hands folded over the back of its head, the elbow falling down to the earth.
Motionless. The cavern quiet and empty but for this large body. This large man.
Emrys took a breath. A giant buried beneath the earth, just like what they’d discovered at the university. He unlaced his hand from Cerys, from Alwyn, and approached the giant.
“Where’s he going?”
“What’s he doing?”
“Little bird, don’t.”
He ignored them, didn’t even bother to place the voice to a name, to a face, to a body. The closer he got, the more he wondered if he watched a statue. The blue hue of the skin made it seem like stone, even though he saw the hairs on its arms, its legs. Even the pores of its jaw became visible. But he had heard of sculptures so pure, so vibrantly alive, that they fooled the casual observer.
He'd read of the technique. How the greatest masters of stone doubled as masters of anatomy. Carving open the human body to understand musculature and tendons, skin and bone, to advance their art. The university promised access to such wonders. Away from the druids, jealous of corpses, would never allow for such investigations.
He kept watch for any movement, for any indication that this giant lived. Didn’t even know if the giant found by the university lived or was some corpse or statue or something still other that he could not imagine. He stared at the side of the massive hand. It could envelope him, crush his bones and flesh to liquid, to dust. Lift him and tears his head from his neck the way he might shred a blade of grass.
Taking a breath in and out, in and out, and then in. He held it. Held it in as fear buzzed within his chest and he stepped still closer. There was no heat emanating from the giant and he reached out a hand and grazed the giant’s skin with his fingertips.
The soft hair of its leg high on its thigh reminded him of feathers more than human hair. Alive. It had to be alive. But it did not stir or notice his touch. Perhaps asleep. Or dead. Dead so long yet still preserved from rot. Still holding his breath, he pressed his palm flat against the giant.
Its skin so hard. Like stone. Cold. Inert. He let his breath out, loosening the fear gripping him. He turned to the others. “It won’t hurt us.”
One of them muttered but he couldn’t tell what was said. The five of them approached slowly. Rhosyn and Sian’s swords remained leveled before them, as if those tiny blades could puncture the giant.
Cerys said, “What is it?”
“A giant.”
“Can see that,” Sian said. “What’s it doing here?” She turned to Rhian, as if she could know. As if any of them could know anything of this place.
Rhian shook her head. “A guardian, perhaps.”
Sian swallowed. “You sure we’re free to go?”
“He’s asleep,” Alwyn said. “Maybe that’s the song. A lullaby.”
“Goda the Loveless protecting us,” Rhian said.
Her words hung in the cavern and they fanned out around the giant. Motionless, breathless, it sat curled in on itself as if it had never moved, as if it never would.
Perhaps it wouldn’t.
A statue.
An open smell. Neither the stink of moss or stale air or even the unwashed skin of this giant. Rather, it was an invisible smell. Absent of life. More than anything, this unsettled Emrys.
Though he wanted to stay and examine the giant, he said, “We should go.”
“Best to leave before it wakes,” Sian said. “Come on.”
They walked to the far end of the cavern bathed in moonlight and Emrys turned back to the giant, sighing. He wanted to go to the university to discover the truth of the world, to unfurl knowledge and logic over life. Yet here, so close to his home, deep questions lurked.
Cerys took him gently by the elbow. “Come on.” And she led him away.
Not back into a tunnel but into the forest. They stepped out of the cavern and simply stood in the forest. When Emrys turned back, he stared at the inside of an immense tree. Looking down and around, he was inside the hollow of a fallen tree. The rest of its trunk lay beside this broken, hollow stump, slowly rotting, covered in fungus that would swallow it whole, regurgitate it back into the earth. Emrys put his palm flat against the blackened, rotting interior of the tree. To push through it. Past it. To return to that cavern of moonlight. But there was only the dead tree, slowly rotting.
Dawn approached. The moons left the sky, now touched with light. Clouds fingered across the sky, painted orange and pink by the sunrise.
“Where were we?” He meant the question for no one, except perhaps himself.
Rhian said, “The space between. We’re alive. Come on.” She walked hand in hand with Alwyin away through the trees. When they reached the dawnkissed grass and stood beyond Chalon’s wicked canopy, Rhian turned east and stretched her arms wide, drinking in the light and the freedom from Chalon’s embrace.
Seeing that they escaped the forest, Sian and Rhosyn hurried after. In the sunlight, Sian dropped her sword and collapsed to her hands and knees. “Gods above and below!” She pressed her face to the earth. Rhosyn stood behind her, dumbed to silence by the vision of the sun.
Cerys watched them but turned back to Emrys. “Come on, little bird.”
Emrys remained in the trunk of the dead tree wondering which moons hung over the giant. Though he’d only just escaped, he wanted to know the way back, to know this wasn’t some shared dream or delusion.
Witness.
The word thrummed through him and he sucked in a breath. The lord of bone calling him to be witness.
He pressed his back to the interior of the tree to keep from collapsing in yet another swoon and stretched a hand towards Cerys. “Help me.” The words fell from his mouth like petals from a flower.
But she heard him.
And she came.
Hard, strong hands took him and half-carried him out of the hollow trunk. “You’re all right, little bird.”
He leaned into her. Leaned on her. Let her take his weight and pull him out of the terror rising, turning his insides to soup.
Witness.
Home.
A lusterless blade piercing even the air and the distance between them and then the fiery tear of its bite in his side.
He screamed. A ragged horror scraping his throat raw. He clung to her and screamed without ceasing until even his breath abandoned him, and yet still he screamed. Silent. Wordless. A cry from deep within him as Home pierced his flesh. No matter how he clawed at the blade, he could not reach it, could not remove it.
Thrashing, tears of blood flowing from his eyes and ears, his blood poured from his side, from right above his right hip, from the terrible blade stabbing him from across the forest. He longed for his senses to release him, for another fit to cast him into unconsciousness, where he would stop feeling, but the flame flaring within his new impossible wound scorched his senses. Alight with sensation, they did not overwhelm him but burned to the edge of reason, to the edges of life and death, offering not even the relief of fainting, of slipping away from himself and his body.
Cerys dragged him, held him, called for help, and the new strong hands upon him were, he knew, Alwyn’s. But even together they struggled to pull him away from the forest. They could make no sense of what happened or why. Only saw the wet blood blossoming on his tunic and the rivers of blood running down his face from eyes and ears, smeared by his thrashing.
When finally they dragged him away from Chalon, the fire quieted to a dull roar and Emrys felt the caress of the dawn upon his face. Breathing shallow and ragged, every lungful scorching his throat, he rolled to his back and spread his limbs on the cold, quiet earth.
The lord of bone silenced as soon as he left the forest but Emrys retraced the echoes within him.
The lord of bone called him Home. He knew his name and his face and the taste of his blood. He would have his vengeance upon him and Emrys knew he would never enter Chalon again, for the lord of bone waited for him and him alone.
The voices of his companions flowed over him but he could not attend them. Could do nothing but lie there like the survivor of a shipwreck.
“We’re going home.”
“This will be my home.”
“You’re welcome here.”
“This isn’t a game, Rhian. Father will know we’ve been gone the night. We’re going.”
“I will not leave him.”
“Then we’ll drag you.”
“By the hair if we have to.”
“Cousins, enough. We could all use a rest.”
“This is Matauc land! We’ll find no rest here. Death, perhaps.”
“None will harm you. I’ll take you to my father’s longhouse. He’ll feed you and give you a place to rest. Now, please, help my cousin.”
“Can’t help those possessed by a demon. Give him to a druid or end his suffering here and now.”
Emrys sat up, his wound afire. Wincing, he propped himself up on his elbows and watched them. Sian reached for Rhian but she pulled her hand away. Sian snatched after her but the pale girl was too quick. She moved behind Alwyn’s huge body and her sister gave up trying to drag her away.
Alwyn saw him then and came to his side, Rhian with him. He crouched down, “Birdie.”
“Al,” Emrys croaked out the name. “Help me stand.”
Cerys came closer. “Is that a good idea?”
Emrys lifted his tunic to reveal the wound. A black ragged scar the width of Home’s blade scabbed over. “Done bleeding.”
She covered her mouth with her hand. “How?”
“You’ll never heal of this,” said Rhian.
“Thanks,” said Emrys.
“Cursed wounds,” Rhosyn spat and she and Sian made gestures of warding. The sign of the moon. “Better for him to die.”
Emrys snorted. Like his father. Like all the Matauc. Emrys mip Neb. The memory so long ago, so close at hand, only the evening before, made him snort once more. “I’d prefer not.”
“Can you stand?” Alwyn stretched out a hand. Emrys took it and his big cousin pulled him to his feet.
Cerys said only, “How?”
Rhian said, “The lord of bone.”
Cerys’ eyes went wide. “How?”
“Don’t know,” Emrys said. “Something about me or something about that place—it’s more dangerous to people like Rhian and me, I guess.”
“You guess,” Sian said.
Cerys scowled at her. “Seems so.”
Alwyn held onto Emrys. Held him up. He spoke to the sisters, to Cerys. “You’re all welcome at my father’s longhouse. Please, rest, if only for the morning.”
“We’re going home.” Sian spoke not to Alwyn but to Rhian. “We’re going, Rhi.”
“Then go without me.”
Rhosyn cursed and turned to Sian. They exchanged whispers.
Sian, exasperated, said, “We’ll escort you, then, to this man’s home.”
Emrys winced at the word, hearing the lord of bone’s voice once more thrumming inside him. Home. A word given new meaning. A word that never meant to him what it did to others.
Emrys mip Neb.
He said, “I need to speak to my father.”
Alwyn’s mouth opened and his eyebrows raised but his face settled once more. He nodded. “Rest first.”
Only then did he turn from the forest to the moorland. But rather than the vast empty moors, he saw the sole tree upon the barrow. Past it, his father’s longhouse. “We’re nearly home.”
Alwyn nodded. “Come on, Birdie.”