Well over an hour passed. Eilonwy spent it hauling loads of dishes and platters back to the scullery, sending Gurgi out for buckets of clean water from the spring, scrubbing and drying the earthenware and stacking it neatly upon its shelves, and conscious of an ever-more-urgent curiosity about what could be happening within the cottage. She thought of strolling by Dallben's window - casually, of course, not necessarily on purpose, and then whatever she overheard would be accidental - but decided against it; Dallben always anticipated such tricks, and would have taken proper, and possibly unpleasant, precautions.
She had just set the last of the dishes in their places when a familiar rhythm of pounding feet interrupted her thoughts; then Taran crashed through the doorway so wildly that she spun around with a startled yelp, fearing some mishap. He was breathless; his face was alight, and both hands clutched a sword in a scabbard.
"Look!" he gasped out, holding the weapon toward her. "Look what Dallben gave me - for my own! Truly mine!"
His elation and pride were pulsing around him in waves so almost-tangible that Eilonwy had to suppress a gesture of wanting to waving away smoke. She grinned, stepping closer to examine the sword. The bronze pommel and scabbard were plain and unadorned, but it was a sturdy, well-crafted weapon. She was pleased, for his sake. "It's -"
"Gird it on me!" Taran interrupted. "I mean...if you please." His face flushed suddenly, dark against his glowing eyes. "Say you will. I want you to be the one to do it."
She blinked, and stared at him, breathing all at once become burdensome. Warmth surged over her like flame spreading over a sheet of parchment. "I..." she swallowed "...Yes, of course." Conscious of the breathlessness of her own voice, she felt her face grow even warmer, and hoped rather desperately that the dimness of the room was helping to hide her flaming cheeks. Stop being an idiot. It's just a sword. But she could not keep from smiling. "If you really-"
"I do!" he blurted out, swerving forward in his eagerness - and then, finding that this placed an awkward lack of space between them, stepped instantly back, his eyes lowered in embarrassment. "I mean," he added, with the hint of a stammer, "after all, you're the only girl in Caer Dallben."
Eilonwy blinked again.
Once, last spring, she had watched Coll lance an ox that had bloated itself on new grass, jabbing into its air-swollen stomach with a thin, razor-tipped iron blade, standing back at the resultant explosive deflation.
She thought, now, that she rather knew how the ox had felt.
The air that had seemed so insufficient a moment ago flew out of her in a rush of anger. "So that's it!" She backed away from him until she ran into a table, barking her hip on the edge. It did not improve her mood. "I might have known something was wrong when you started being so polite."
Snatching up a towel and bowl, she scrubbed fiercely at the earthenware - already quite dry, but it was better to look at something other than Taran's startled face. He looked, she decided, exactly as the ox had. "If that's your only reason, Taran of Caer Dallben, you can find someone else, and I don't care how long it takes you, but the longer the better!"
Her voice broke on the last word. Llyr, she was going to cry, could this ridiculous circumstance get any worse? Stupid, stupid- which one of them was? After all, she was the one who had thought-
Well, never mind what she'd thought.
Taran was standing there bewildered; even without looking at him she could read his confusion in the very air. "Now what's wrong?" he said, with evident exasperation. "I said 'please' didn't I?"
She made no answer, pinching her mouth together, and he must have interpreted her silence as a weakening, for he stepped up to stand next to her. "Come, don't be cross. Do gird it on me," he urged, and added, in a conspiratorial murmur, "I promise to tell you what happened at the council."
The towel slowed on the bowl as she concentrated fiercely on not turning her head toward him. "I don't want to know," she growled through gritted teeth, trying to ignore his gaze burning into the side of her face. "I couldn't care less what-"
From the corner of her eye she saw him grin. Oh, blast.
Eilonwy froze, struggling, and then with a grunt of frustration she turned to him, blushing again, irritated at how he could disarm her with nothing more than that dratted smile. There it was, blooming over his face, quirked crooked at the left corner, under eyes that knew, without knowing how, that it would always undo her. Taran twitched his dark brows impishly and held the sword out to her again.
She threw the towel at his face and snatched the sword out of his hands. "Oh, here. Give me that thing."
He scrabbled at the towel, laughing, then slid his belt off and handed it to her, almost dancing in anticipation as she threaded it through the scabbard loops. She chuckled in spite of herself. "You look like Gurgi when he's watching dinner preparations. Hold your arms up."
He stood tall, beaming, and she stepped close and reached around him to flip the belt end across his back - the work of a moment, but before it was done she found herself breathless again. In the brief instant her arms were around him she thought he had turned his head, just a little, to inhale near her hair. She wondered what it smelled like; bonfire-smoke and hay, probably, just like him; when was the last time she'd washed it?
"Don't think I'm going through all the ceremonies and speeches about being brave and invincible," she said, to cover her self-consciousness. "To begin with, I don't think they apply to Assistant Pig-Keepers. And besides, I don't know them." A moment of fiddling with the buckle, the satisfying creak of old leather pulled tight. "There, now."
She stepped back to survey the result. This sword was a better fit than the ones he had carried throughout their first journey; its size and plain style suited to him...though perhaps it was just that he was taller and broader now, more suited to carrying any blade. "I must admit," she said, "it does look rather well on you."
Taran glowed and drew the blade, holding it up and twisting it in the air. "Yes. This is a weapon for a man and a warrior!"
She glared at him. His head was going to float right off his shoulders over this bit of metal, that was plain to be seen. What had Dallben been thinking, giving it to him? She' have words with the old man later. "Enough of that," Eilonwy snapped, stamping to bring him back to earth. "What about the council?"
He sheathed the sword with an expression only a little sheepish, and glanced at the door and window to see that they were not overheard. "We're setting out for Annuvin at dawn," he whispered. "To wrest the cauldron from Arawn himself. The one he uses to-"
"Annuvin!" she exclaimed, cutting him off in surprise. Just saying the word made a chill run down her spine, mingled fear and, despite all her upset of the morning, a fair bit of excitement. An offensive! "It's about time," she declared, "the Sons of Don decided to go out and do something about Arawn, instead of fiddling about, waiting to see what he'll do next. I wonder it took them so long."
Taran looked shocked and a little annoyed. "I suppose you think they should have marched upon Annuvin with the whole army years ago."
"Well," Eilonwy remarked coolly, "it isn't as though nobody knew where Arawn was. Leaving him alone for years so he could keep getting stronger and make cauldron-born and who-knows-what-all doesn't seem like the most sensible thing to me. I daresay it would have been much easier to defeat him when he was first setting himself up in Annuvin."
"That was ages ago," Taran snapped, incensed at her criticism. "You don't know what they could and couldn't have done. I'd like to see you go up to Gwydion and tell him what you think he should be doing."
"It might be exactly what he needs," she retorted, "but no matter - dawn, is it? Why didn't you tell me right away? I won't have half enough time to get my things ready." She whirled to survey the scullery shelves, mentally calculating portable foodstuffs. "How long will we be gone? I must ask Dallben for a sword, too. Do you think I'll need..."
"Wait, no," Taran interrupted, laying an arresting hand on her shoulder. "No, no. You don't understand." She frowned at him, less at his words than at the patronizing expression he had assumed. "This is a task for warriors. We can't be burdened with a girl. When I said 'we' I meant - "
He broke off as she jerked away from him, flinging his hand from her shoulder. "What?" she shrieked. "And all this while you let me think - Taran of Caer Dallben, you make me angrier than anyone I've ever met!"
All the jumbled feelings of the entire day suddenly rose up within her, fury uppermost, engulfing, choking; she gulped for breath. "Warrior indeed! I don't care if you have a hundred swords - underneath it you're still an Assistant Pig-Keeper and if Gwydion's willing to take you, there's no reason he shouldn't take me!"
Backing against the wall, Taran stood frozen, mouth open as if he'd meant to argue but forgotten what to say. Anger was battering at her control, crumbling it; the acid, metallic taste of magic was filling her mouth, forming itself into dangerous shapes. His face distorted in her vision until it was a white oval floating in the darkness, a target. If he stayed another moment...
"Get out of my scullery!" she roared in desperation, and Taran, too experienced for pride, fled out of the door - moments before a varied mass of crockery flung itself across the room like a flock of earthenware birds, and crashed in the place he'd stood.
Eilonwy leaned over the table, trembling, fighting down the overwhelming impulse for further violence. Holding it back felt like trying not to vomit; magic and bile had a similar taste and it still filled her mouth; her stomach lurched and she wrung a towel from the cold water bucket and buried her hot face in it.
When her breathing had calmed to a ragged shudder she lifted her eyes and stared at the pottery shards littering the floor. Oh, Belin...she'd catch it. Dallben would ban her from magic for a week and she wouldn't blame him. Her legs felt wobbly; with an hysterical gasp she slumped to the cold slate floor, leaned against a cider keg and gave up holding back all the tears that had built up since the morning. Throwing her arms around her knees, she buried her face in her skirts and sobbed stormily.
There was a familiar soft click of bared toenails on the slate, and then Gurgi's nose snuffled at her ear, his whiskers tickling her cheek. She raised her face to look at him, half-resentful that anyone should see her in her current state, but given the choice, she'd want it to be him. Whatever else he might be, Gurgi was always beautifully sympathetic to the moods of his favorite humans - even when they were at odds with one another. Which must make it hard for him sometimes, she thought, with a wry internal twitch.
Gurgi's amber eyes were wide and anxious. "Woe and sadness," he whimpered, "Gurgi knows what troubles wise princess. Yes! He knows, because he has also been banished. To stay behind with worrisome waitings while the great warriors seek the wicked cauldron!"
Eilonwy sniffed, and scratched his chin where the bristles were thinnest. "Would you want to go? It's going to be dangerous, you know."
"Yes, yes! There will be dangers! But Gurgi knows the woods and the streams; he lived there long, long, and he is alive still, even though fierce creatures tried to catch him; oh yes, many times." He rolled his eyes and growled, adding. "He is bold and clever, and can stay in the trees with sneakings and peekings, and could help Master - help all of the great warriors - be safe. But they say no. Gurgi is not a warrior or a man, so he must stay."
She scowled. "Yes, exactly. It's like being told you're a toadstool, isn't it? Useless, is what they mean." Anger still filled her, no longer explosive, but a smoldering simmer. "Do you know what Taran said to me? We can't be burdened with a girl. I've heard that before. I wonder if he remembers." She scrubbed at her face with her skirt and rose wearily to her feet, crossing to the far wall to pick up the broken bits of earthenware, laying them in her apron.
Gurgi brought the broom, and between the two of them they cleared all the shattered bits from the floor. "If I were Medwyn," Eilonwy muttered through clenched teeth, "all earth and healing, I suppose I could mend these with a word. How wonderful it would be to do that...instead of just breaking and destroying things." She fitted two shards together and glared at the gaps in the seam, willing them to join, but nothing happened, and she sighed and dropped them into her lap. Gurgi looked at her in concern. "Wise princess has great magics," he said encouragingly.
"Not great enough," she grunted. "Here, get some fresh water, will you? I'll mop up the splinters."
He took the pail and scampered out. Intending to dump the rubbish somewhere outside, Eilonwy turned to the door with her apron full and almost ran into Dallben, who had materialized in the entryway with his usual unnerving silence. She gave a little startled yelp, and felt her cheeks grow hot. It shouldn't have been a surprise - she knew he would have sensed that sudden surge of magic even if he hadn't heard all her shouting - but confound it! Why must he creep up on people so?
He surveyed the scene, his arms folded over the cloud of grey whiskers covering his chest. "Well?"
"I..." Eilonwy stopped, wrestling down the impulse to vindicate herself, but she could not pretend to be meek. She stared him down defiantly. "Yes. I lost my temper. I was...severely tested," she added, with a grimace, "but nobody was hurt."
"Except our dishware," the old man rumbled, with a beetling of his wiry eyebrows.
She sighed. "I don't suppose there's any way for me to fix them."
"Not in your current state," Dallben sniffed. He studied her for a moment; she stood, gazing morbidly at the broken shards in her apron.
"I can imagine what happened in here," he remarked, in a tone that suggested it was no more nor less than what he had expected. "It's too dangerous a journey for you. I hesitated even to send Taran, but..." He spread his hands in deprecation. "I have only myself to whom to answer for his safety."
"You could say the same for me," she argued. "I've got no one to care, either."
Dallben shifted in the doorway and she felt the quick flicker of his humor, mixed with sadness, before he said gently. "You are mistaken. Besides several people in this vicinity who care very much, you have a line of matriarchs that would give me no rest, night or day."
She glared at him at this, curiosity warring with sullenness. "They're all dead."
He swept his gnarled fingers through the air. "It doesn't matter. They are not to be trifled with, in this world or the next."
"It never stopped Achren."
"And was she ever anything but unpleasant?" Dallben said. "There was more than your recalcitrance and Arawn's oversight plaguing her, you know. Come," he went on, blocking further discussion. "Bring those pieces inside. I'll teach you how to mend them once you've calmed down."
"I don't understand," Eilonwy said, dumping the contents of her apron onto the table in Dallben's chamber, "why I can't so much as light a candle when I'm frustrated, but in a good tantrum I can blast half a shelf of crockery across the room without even trying."
Dallben lowered himself onto his chair with a rusty sigh. "It is a matter of control. Conjuring requires focus and intent. Anger erodes both, and power without boundaries is always destructive."
She slumped onto the stool opposite him, propping her elbows on the table, chin in hands. "Why is it so much stronger?"
"It is not. It is easier. And the results are often...more dramatic, to the observer. But just as in any ordinary pursuit, so it is in magic: creation requires care, skill and training. Any fool can destroy." He surveyed her in silence for a long moment; Eilonwy felt him probing at her mind thoughtfully.
"How do I even approach it?" she asked, fiddling with two shards, fitting them together and examining the light shining through the crack. "I didn't think I had any power over earth."
"Not directly," Dallben said. "But fire and water are forces to shape all else, and you can use them. What is pottery but earth and water, cured in fire?" He touched a long finger to the shards she held, muttered something. There was a trembling, a tremor in the air around them, and the clay moved in her hands, softened, joined. She caught her breath at the familiarity of it. "Wait, I know this, I -"
She scrabbled for another shard, searching for one that fit. Finally one snapped into place and she shut her eyes, remembering silent stones in dark tunnels, willing herself back into the darkness. Move. Her fingers trembled as the clay softened, flowed, shifted. She opened her eyes. The crack was gone.
"Well done," Dallben said.
Eilonwy let out a long, wavering breath. "I used to...to move the stones in Spiral Castle this way. I don't know how I learned it. After I found Dyrnwyn I thought...it was all through the whole place, that power. I thought it must be what moved things."
"Dyrnwyn sensed you." Dallben was sifting through more broken shards, handing her another that fit the half-mended bowl. "And I have no doubt it played some part in guiding you. But you moved those stones yourself."
Eilonwy fitted the last piece, breathed it together, set the mended bowl on the table, and swallowed hard, staring at it. Her fingers prickled, numb at the tips. "I hate how it feels," she said, as if confessing to a fault. "It's like being stung. Is it like that for you?"
"The mortal body," said Dallben, "was not designed to accommodate magic. Its effect on the senses is unique for each of those who practice it. But it is likely that, under Achren's influence, your experience of it was more unpleasant than most."
She stared at the table. "I'm never to be free of her, am I?"
Dallben turned his gaze to the window and said nothing for a long time. She felt him thinking. "We cannot choose or change what has gone before," he said, "only how we respond to it now. Achren will be with you until you set her free of your own will."
She had no patience with abstractions. Anger flared, indignation, to cover an aching sense of loss. "I set her free? I was the one imprisoned." She scowled at her tingling fingers. "I don't even know all that she took from me. How is she mine to do anything with?"
"What dungeon holds you now?" Dallben asked. "You are as free here as anyone can be, unless you choose to stay captive to your own fears." He sank back in his chair. "It is as I have told you since the beginning."
Eilonwy squirmed on the bench. "I've gotten...better."
"Better at controlling it," he conceded, then reached out to turn a pottery shard over, pointedly. "Sometimes."
She sighed, tired of the conversation, chafing at the unfairness of ...everything. Noises drifted through the window: men shouting instructions, the whickering and whinnying of horses. She heard Taran call for Coll with a question about extra saddlebags, and with a jolt she remembered what was in the wind. Dallben seemed to sense her thoughts.
"You'll find it easier to bear if you stay busy. By my count," he said, squinting at the remaining broken bits of crockery, "there are another four...maybe five bowls and platters there. Suppose you tend to them, now that you know what to do." When she frowned he raised his wiry brows. "Unless you'd prefer to help with the preparations out there."
Eilonwy coughed and picked up a pottery chunk.
