As they made their way into the open space, Taran was sitting straight, head thrown back, surveying the direction the marsh bird had flown. "We have a chance to make up time here," he muttered, and called back to the bard, trailing behind them, "Can you manage some speed, Fflewddur?"

Fflewddur gave a rather pale whoop in an attempt at cheerfulness. "Lead on, lad! A Fflam can fly when needs must!"

"Eilonwy," Taran murmured back to her, "hold tight."

She grunted assent, not overly pleased, but too proud to complain, and threw her arms around Taran for support as the powerful back beneath them jolted into a trot, then an easy swinging canter. She gripped her knees tighter as they skimmed the tall grass, as the beating breath of the horse mingled with the swift thud of his hooves. Then Taran shifted, leaning forward, and Melynlas plunged into a gallop.

Eilonwy yelped. This, again! And faster than ever, at that; the stallion seemed possessed, flying over the meadow with breathtaking speed. Taran's typical uncertainty often seemed to bleed through to Melynlas, who would hesitate, waiting for his rider to make a decision. But not now; even she could sense it, clinging to him as she was — Taran's total certainty of the path compelled him forward as though he were drawn by invisible rope; had Melynlas suddenly stopped she felt sure the boy would have leapt over his very head and continued careening wildly on. She buried her face into his cloak between his shoulder blades and hung on for dear life.

They galloped on, over rolling land and bracken, but she saw nothing of it, too intent on keeping her seat. At some point of particularly uneven ground she felt Taran grab her arm where it wrapped around his torso, and wondered why it didn't simply occur to him to slow down rather than help steady her. Idiot boy! No matter —they were through, back on clear turf, and his hand disappeared—good riddance; he should be using both on the reins, since he insisted on this mad capering.

After a long and agonizing time, Fflewddur shouted for a rest from somewhere behind them. Eilonwy felt Taran ease Melynlas out of the full gallop, rolling his posture slowly backwards, pushing her upright along with him. The dreadful pounding of hooves slowed, and the rocking ease of the canter returned. Lluagor came rollicking up beside them, her sides lathered; her riders both looked dazed, Gurgi clinging to Fflewddur's cloak like a cocklebur. The horses slowed, trotted, then walked, cooling down. Fflewddur looked askance at Taran and coughed.

"When you said speed," he said, "I'd no idea you meant a gwythaint-dive across a meadow."

"You were the one who said you could fly if you needed," Eilonwy reminded him grumpily, unlocking her stiff fingers from their clutching grip at Taran's midsection and sitting back.

Fflewddur grinned at her feebly. "Ought to see your hair."

"No, thanks," she snorted, running her palms over the abused strands blown from her braids, "if it's anything like yours. Both of you look like haystacks after a gale."

Taran ignored them all maddeningly, continuing to scan their surroundings in preoccupation. "We'll stop here for a bit," he announced, reining up, and Eilonwy slid from Melynlas's back with a sigh of relief.

Her legs folded beneath her when she touched the ground, and she slumped wearily across her own knees, heedless of the dampness beneath the grass. Gurgi tossed himself beside her with a low moan and Fflewddur crouched, his knees popping. But Taran remained on his feet, looking keenly at the sky. "Since we've stopped, Gurgi might as well share out some food," he suggested, "but we'd better find shelter first, if we don't want to get soaked."

The bard looked up in disbelief. "Soaked?" He glanced about them, and up — the sky that had been so cheerlessly gray that morning was now blue…blue as ice, and nearly as cold. "Great Belin," he exclaimed, "there isn't a cloud in the sky! It's a gorgeous day—taking everything into consideration."

Taran glanced at him but made no answer; his eyes had that faraway light in them, as though he were looking through a curtain into another world, and again his hand was held at his throat, obscuring the brooch Eilonwy knew he was clutching at his palm. "If I were you," she said slowly to Fflewddur, "I should…listen to him. It's not usually a wise thing to do," she amended, as he turned amazed round eyes upon her, "but the circumstances are a little different now."

Taran took Melynlas by the bridle and strode away with a gait that said he knew exactly where he was going. Fflewddur started to speak again, stopped himself, looked at Eilonwy and then back at the boy and horse steadily moving away. "Well," he said, "I'll be…." and then cut himself off with a shrug. "Ah, well. On we go, I suppose. Come, old girl." And he clucked to Lluagor.

They followed Taran across the fields, Eilonwy marching along at the rear, deliberating, still wondering at the alien transformation that had taken hold of the boy she knew. It was oddly compelling, this new authoritative manner of his, and yet…it felt wrong, somehow, as though some faery trick had spirited Taran away and left a shining, too-perfect changeling in his place. She found herself wishing he'd make some mistake, just to reassure her of his…his…Taran-ness. Silly, she thought helplessly. Isn't it better for him, this way, to be so sure of himself? To be so much more? And yet the feeling persisted.

"I hope you aren't wounded," Fflewddur said to Taran as they walked. "My war leader at home has an old wound that gives him a twinge when the weather changes. Very handy, I admit; though it does seem a painful way of foretelling rain. I always think it's easier just to wait, and every kind of weather's bound to come along sooner or later."

Eilonwy started to say something about the brooch, seeing that Taran was too distracted to answer. But the wind curled around her restlessly, lifting itself into her awareness, and she inhaled and stumbled to a sudden halt, her heart thudding strangely.

What was…

What was it?

The air felt…sharp. No, that wasn't it. Bracing, cold…no, was it hot instead? It stung in her nose and throat and lungs and tasted faintly of salt, and something else, indefinable, that jolted through her with fierce, tingling energy. It was like…like…oh, she had no words to describe it; her thoughts tumbled over each other, crowded out by feeling. Perhaps if…if one could breathe lightning, it might feel like this — jagged, unpredictable, powerful, full of flickering light and heavy, pulsing darkness. It seemed to pull at all her limbs, and then push them back, in an ebb and flow of current. It pulled at her spirit the way ravenous hunger gnawed at her stomach. She felt a wild impulse to raise her arms to the wind, filled with an exhilarating surety that if she did, she would fly.

She was sure she had never encountered anything like this before…and yet it felt, unaccountably, familiar. How? She shut her eyes, lifted her head, and inhaled again and again, until she was dizzy with too much air.

Didn't anyone else feel it? Her companions had disappeared over the edge of a shallow ravine, apparently unaware of any change in their environment or her transfixed state. After a moment Fflewddur's head popped back into view. "Did we lose you?" he called back, and Eilonwy, jarred from her trance, ran forward, breathless.

"Do you smell it?" she demanded. "Or…or feel it? The air…it's different, somehow, it's…" She stopped at the edge of the ravine, unwilling to move out of the wind and its enchanting current. "Oh, it's marvelous…I… I don't know why. What is it?"

Fflewddur put his long nose up and sniffed loudly. "Just air, as far as I can tell. And grass and mud and…" He sniffed again and made a face. "Sweaty…uh…horses."

"No, she's right." Taran scrambled up the earthen side of the washout to stand beside her, lifting his head to the wind. "The wind has shifted. It's coming from the sea, now."

The sea!

The lightning spread from her lungs to her blood, rippling fire and ice through all her extremities, its sizzling shock leaving her breathless. The sea! Of course. Of course it was familiar: that smell, that taste, that push and pull of force. Almost she could hear the thunder of surf, feel it vibrating beneath her feet. She had felt it before; she had…hadn't she? How long had it been? Long.…longLlyr, not since before…

"It's restless," Taran went on, "with a briny taste. There's grass and weeds, too, which makes me think we aren't far from Morva. If all goes well, we may reach the Marshes by tomorrow."

Such sensible words. They buzzed like insects in her ears. Eilonwy turned and stared at him confusedly, and with no small amount of irritation. What was he going on about? Who cared about grass and weeds and marshes when…when…oh…

Reality pulled her back to earth with a jolt. Oh yes, of course. That was why they were here. So close to the sea: close enough to smell it, to taste it on the air, but for all the unbearable, desperate longing its call inspired in her, they wouldn't be seeing it, wouldn't be going to it—just into some nasty marshes to find an old cauldron. All because of that stupid, hateful Arawn. Arawn ruined everything. He and Achren, the two of them, always dragging her away from what she wanted, from where she belonged.

All the force of her exhilaration turned instantly to resentment and then to fury. Taran slid back down the bank, leaving her alone on the edge, trembling, unable to move. Eilonwy stood frozen, hands clenched into her cloak, staring southwest into the wind.

Gurgi's voice floated up from below. "Crunchings and munchings for wise princess? She will join us?"

"I…" Her voice cracked, strained from holding back a flood. "No. I'm going…to walk a bit. Not hungry."

"You ought to get under cover," Fflewddur offered. "I'm still not convinced about the weather, but there could be unsavoury things about."

She felt she'd welcome any foe at the moment: something she could vent her anger on without any qualm of conscience. It was boiling at her core, sparking at her fingertips with foreboding familiarity; she had to get away from them all or…"I won't be long," she choked out, "nor go far. I've just…got to…"

The salt wind filled her lungs again; she cut her own words off and whirled away, stumbling a few steps and breaking into a run.

Her stiff legs slammed over the uneven ground, footfalls jarring up to her chest, rattling the air in her lungs. Eilonwy threw herself over a mound of turf and slid down its far side before she collapsed. She buried her face in her cloak and finally let free the scream she'd been holding back for…oh, it felt like all day. Everything, everything was wrong…the quest gone awry, Adaon dying, Doli missing, Taran not being Taran, and now this…this breath on the wind, this tug at her soul that she could not follow, as cruel as the smell of food to one dying of hunger but barred from a feast. Her friends would never understand it, however much she tried to explain — Fflewddur and Gurgi would only be perplexed, and Taran was living in another realm, a glamour-world cast by that brooch. There was no one—no one who could help with this.

Another scream. Her fingertips prickled, and the edges of the bracken nearest her shrivelled, wisps of smoke curling upward. She lowered her face to the ground and lay still, watching sparks chase one another down the edges of leaves and twigs. It was strangely soothing, a hypnotic rivulet of orange light. Her attention upon it seemed to make it glow brighter, spread faster, swallowing the unfortunate vegetation until only a blackened spray remained. This she reached out to touch, and it crumbled into ash.

Something in her found this satisfying, just calming enough to let her roll to face the sky, filled still with a burning ache over the injustice of all things, but able to think again, with grim practicality. If you want to get even with Arawn, she told herself, then getting at that cauldron really is the best thing you could be doing. So perhaps we are on the right track, in spite of it all.

She sighed. The sea-borne wind sang in the brush like a lullaby, fluttering over her face in a caress, melting her anger into grief. Hot tears welled, ran in rivulets into her hair. She lay there and let them flow, staring into the sky, until it grew slowly gray, until the first cold spatter of rain wet her cheeks instead.

Rain. He'd been right, again.

She was damp by the time she made it back to her companions, sliding down into the ravine and finding them all huddled in a recessed area beneath the bank. "There you are," Fflewddur remarked in relief. "Feeling all right, then?"

He was looking at her curiously and she knew her face bore the marks of having wept, but felt no compulsion to speak of it. "Well enough," she said shortly, and left the rest to hang. They all had reason enough for grief, over the last days; let them assume she'd sought out privacy to relieve both body and spirit. It wasn't untrue.

Taran looked at her thoughtfully but said nothing, and she wondered if the brooch had reassured him that she'd been nearby and not in danger, or if he was just too preoccupied with its marvels to care.

Gurgi passed her his wallet and she helped herself to its contents without enthusiasm. Past the mouth of their shelter the rain grew from a drizzle to a downpour. A brown rivulet gushed past at the bottom of the ravine. "Wise master protects us from slippings and drippings!" Gurgi exclaimed in awe.

Fflewddur looked impressed. "I must say you foretold it exactly."

"Not I," Taran said, shaking his head. "Without Adaon's clasp, I'm afraid we'd all have been drenched."

The bard raised an eyebrow. "How's that? I shouldn't think a clasp would have anything to do with it."

Eilonwy listened, trying not to feel bitter, as Taran recounted the wonders of Adaon's brooch yet again. Fflewddur leaned forward quizzically as he spoke, squinting at the bit of iron. "Very interesting," he declared. "Whatever else it may have, it bears the bardic symbol—those three lines there, like a sort of arrowhead."

"Yes," Taran said, "I saw them, but I didn't know what they were."

"Naturally," Fflewddur rejoined, with a touch of self-importance. "It's part of the secret lore of the bards. I learned that much when I was studying for my examinations."

Taran slid his fingertips over the grooves in the metal broodingly. "But what do they mean?"

Eilonwy coughed, and both of them glanced at her in surprise, as though they'd forgotten she was there. "As I recall," she said dryly, "the last time I asked him to read an inscription…"

"Yes, yes," Fflewddur interrupted, turning pink, "but that was something else again. I know the bardic symbol well. It is secret, but…since you have the clasp I don't suppose it can do any harm for me to tell you. The lines mean knowledge, truth, and love."

They all digested this. Eilonwy, having expected more, wrinkled her nose. "Well. That's very nice. But I can't imagine why knowledge, truth, and love should be so much of a secret."

Fflewddur shrugged, and his mouth quirked wryly at the corner. "Perhaps I should say unusual as much as secret. I sometimes think it's hard enough to find any one of them, even separately. Put them all together and you have something very powerful indeed."

Before she could consider this, Taran, who had been leaning against the earthen wall at their backs, straightened up sharply, as though he'd been struck from behind. His face was suddenly pale. "We must leave," he gasped, "now. At once. Hurry!"

All the rest exclaimed in shock and bewilderment, too confused to even comprehend him, much less move swiftly. He grabbed both Fflewddur and Eilonwy by the wrists and marched forward, pulling them. "Taran of Caer Dallben," Eilonwy gasped, as he propelled her out into the pouring rain, "you're going too far! I can understand coming out of the rain, but I don't see deliberately going into it."

He ignored this, and dropped her wrist to yank up Melynlas's picket. "Get Lluagor, quickly! Get the horses away from the embankment!"

Spurred on by his urgency, they hastened to comply, and scrambled away from the side of the ravine, still mystified. But upon their very heels there was an ominous rumble, and then a roar, and they whirled around to see the slope they had left transform itself into a fluid mass, collapsing over their recessed shelter, and rolling down into the ravine bottom. Eilonwy shrieked, leaping back as the rivulet splashed them with mud and churned itself into a brown river. Gurgi yelped, and threw himself at Taran's feet. "Oh, great, brave, wise master! Gurgi is thankful! His poor tender head is spared from terrible dashings and crashings!"

They all stood still as stone, staring at the brown flood moving past, their breath white in the rain. Fflewddur whistled at last, and said in a rather colorless voice, "Well, well. Fancy that. Another moment and we'd have been buried for good and all." He blew his breath out suddenly, and went a bit green, though he clapped Taran on the back with attempted joviality. "Never part with that clasp, my friend. It's a true treasure." And he turned away, hunched over like a man trying not to be sick, and led Lluagor up the other bank.

Taran was clutching, silent and pale-faced, at the brooch. Eilonwy, limbs weak and heart thudding with the terror of what they had avoided, moved closer to him. "How?" she whispered. "How does it tell you?"

He shook his head. His voice was hoarse when he answered. "It's just…a feeling. Nothing but dread, all at once, for no reason. I didn't know what was going to happen. Just that we had to get away." His eyes met hers, full of fear and confusion. It was almost comforting, after his strange, unnatural confidence all day—more than that, it was a thing familiar to her. Perhaps he felt the way she often did, when magic threaded through her at odd moments she wasn't expecting it, pushed a sensation into her mind that it did not know the shape of —a phenomenon that had been an uneasy companion all her life. How much more the discomfort, for him? The brooch was clearly good magic, but that didn't make it any lighter a burden.

She knew not what to say to him—her empathy was too new an insight to put into words—so she reached out and squeezed his hand, a silent communion of understanding and thanks. He looked surprised. Then his anxious brow settled into lines of faint relief. He squeezed back, and nodded for her to precede him up the bank.

Too shaken to rest any longer, they mounted the horses and trekked on through the rain. There were no more wild gallops. Taran held them to a brisk walk that no doubt kept the horses warm. The humans on their backs had no advantage of exercise, and long before nightfall, all were shivering, though the rain had slackened. When they descended at dusk into a narrow gorge that gave them respite from the wind, Taran called a halt. Eilonwy slid from the saddle and curled up on the ground, too weary to care about mud.

A fire would be welcome, but they were in the midst of bare moorland, without a stick to burn for miles. Perhaps if she had better control of her magic, she could make even soaking-wet turf kindle, but as it was she had no energy even to try. They set no watch. Gurgi curled up at her back, bedraggled and reeking; Fflewddur sprawled on her other side. Taran lay apart, his sword drawn, his free hand grasping the brooch. The last she saw, his eyes were still open.

He was moody the next morning, even quieter than usual as they rose at first light to share out food and saddle the horses, frequently stepping away to scan the sky, the path ahead, or, it appeared, to shut his eyes and listen for something only he could hear. Mindful of her revelation of the previous evening, Eilonwy tried not to hold it against him. She waited until they had emerged from the gorge onto the moor, where the sea-wind threaded itself through her veins and tugged beneath her skin, reminding her once again of the double edge of magic.

"Did you sleep at all?" she murmured to him.

He stirred, turning his head back toward her. "A little. Not very well. I had such strange dreams again…" He hesitated and huffed out a wan sound that tried to be a self-deprecating chuckle. "I'm sorry. You're probably tired of hearing about it all."

She grimaced a bit at the irony, but he couldn't see her face. "It's all right. Tell me."

He ran a hand through his hair; she could see the tension in his knuckles, in the angle of his wrist. "I can make no sense of them. I saw Ellidyr in mortal danger. I wanted to help him…but at the same time it was as though my hands were bound and I couldn't do a thing."

Eilonwy scowled across the moor, all her resentment transferring to a new subject. "I'm afraid the only place you're going to see Ellidyr is in your dreams. There certainly hasn't been a trace of him anywhere. For all we know he could have been to Morva and gone by now. Or never reached the Marshes in the first place."

He made no reply, and she continued rather bitterly, "It's too bad you didn't dream of an easier way to find that cauldron and put an end to all this. I'm cold and wet and at this point I'm beginning not to care who has it."

"I did dream of it." His voice was anxious. "I dreamed of it, too, but everything was confused and clouded. I think…I think we came upon the cauldron, but…" He shook his head. "When we found it, I wept."

She could find no response that was not either false cheer or gloomy speculation, so she said nothing, and they rode on, in a silence matching the land before them, stretching bleak and grey and seemingly endless, to the horizon.


Sooooo it's been over a year since my last update, though I've written much else in the interim, so if you're a follower here, go check out the profile for new, shorter things. "Short breaks" from a novel seem to turn, always, into long hiatus, and I wish I were brave enough to swear that will never happen again. But I can't, and on we go anyhow.