Conflicts Without and Within
When Eilonwy opened her eyes again the light was the warm pink color of early morning, and Fflewddur was there, sitting beneath a nearby tree. She blinked confusedly. Hadn't they just left this scene behind? Was it a dream, bickering with Taran, running from cauldron-born, rocking in a boat...she shook her head. Some of it had to be a dream, at least, but not all, for the trees were different, and Fflewddur looked haggard - though when he saw that she was truly awake, his smile was relieved and delighted.
"Well, now." He rose, crossing to her, and offered her a hand to sit up. "You've had a time of it. How do you feel?"
"Tired," said Eilonwy. "But I don't know if it's more from the running or the riding. I'm not much used to either." She took his hand and pulled herself up, wincing with the effort; every muscle ached, even the ones she'd never noticed before.
"I can't say I'm fond of either of them, myself," said Fflewddur, sitting back down and stretching his legs out; his knees and ankles popped audibly and he grunted. "But I'm less fond of being maimed and murdered. The good news is, we've bought ourselves enough time for a short rest."
He hesitated and she raised an eyebrow at him. "And the bad?"
"Those dead things are still on our trail," he admitted, gesturing vaguely in the direction they'd come. "But, there it is. Nothing we can do but keep on. After a bit of a breather, that is." He crossed his hands over his chest and shut his eyes.
She sighed, wishing she could feel so resigned, but only becoming vexed. It wasn't fair. To escape from Spiral Castle, enjoy one glorious night of peace, and then the very next day nearly kill yourself running like a fox from a pack of hounds - tireless, unrelenting hounds, no less - this was not what freedom ought to be. A perverse, irrational wish to find someone to blame made her look around their surroundings critically. "Where's Taran?"
"He and Gurgi are off foraging," the bard answered, without stirring. "We're out of provisions - but there's your share in the saddlebags, if you're hungry. Do forgive me for not bringing it to you - the truth is, I could sleep for three days."
He looked it, she thought, pushing herself off the ground stiffly and moving toward Melyngar, who whickered at her approach. She dug into the saddlebags, ravenously hungry, and made swift work of what was left of their store...nothing like enough. Still chewing to make it last longer, she returned and sat near Fflewddur, who opened one eye to squint at her. "Feeling better?"
"A bit," she said, and grinned at him. "Probably better than you. I'm sorry I couldn't keep up." She picked up a twig and poked it listlessly into the dirt, smile fading. "I suppose I'm a hindrance after all," she said bitterly. "Just as Taran said."
"Oh, now, none of that," Fflewddur said quickly, patting her knee. "I, for one, am glad to have you with us. We'd not even be this far if not for you - as you pointed out. Don't let that boy's nonsense make you doubt it."
She made a wry face. "He's the one who doubts it. I suppose he'll never let me forget that I couldn't even last the day."
The bard was quiet for a moment; she felt his gaze on her as she continued poking at the ground. Finally he spoke gently. "Don't judge him too harshly, my dear. He's a bit foolhardy, and in far over his head, but he's a good lad. All the while you slept he never spoke a word against you. You could extend him the same courtesy."
She looked back at him, startled, face warming with shame, but he had already shut his eyes again, laying his head back peacefully on the turf. How it was that a rebuke from Fflewddur didn't make her angry?...only sorry. So, Taran had not made comment on her failure to keep up... and it had to be true, for the bard's harp strings had remained silently intact. She considered this in mild surprise. Perhaps she'd misjudged him...but hang it all, if he'd stop changing every time she blinked, going from being friendly and likeable one moment to insulting and infuriating the next, it would be so much easier to decide what she really thought of him.
"I'm surprised you're not out foraging, Fflewddur," she said. "Aren't you out in the wilderness half the time?"
"Well," said Fflewddur matter-of-factly, "someone had to stay with you. A Fflam is flexible! And the truth of it is I'm a lousy forager - as I was rudely reminded, when I got a bit too confident, just before they left." He jerked a thumb toward his harp meaningfully and she laughed out loud.
"It's no wonder you're so thin, then."
"The Fflams are all thin," he affirmed contentedly. "I shouldn't want to break tradition. Besides, it enhances our smashing good looks."
Oh, dear heavens, if only certainotherpeople could be as uncomplicatedly adorable as he was. She was still laughing at his last comment when the bushes rattled nearby and Taran stepped through, looking pale, exhausted, and more anxious than ever; on one side he supported the gangly figure of Gurgi, who was holding one leg up awkwardly and whimpering in pain.
She sprang up in concern, forgetting, for the moment, her ambivalence. "What happened?"
"He's hurt," said the boy, handing her two bundled cloaks. He assisted Gurgi slowly, and with surprising gentleness, to the ground, where the creature curled up pathetically around his wounded leg. It was torn and bleeding. "He fell from a tree when the branch he was on broke," Taran explained, his forehead furrowed with worry. "He's going to have to ride Melyngar with you for a time. Could you take the weapons off her? Fflewddur and I will carry them." She glanced at him, hesitating, but there was no note of accusation or reproach in his voice, only weary resignation. Silently she laid the bundles on the ground and crossed to Melyngar to comply with his request.
When she came back, Taran passed her a handful of mushrooms and a small, sticky chunk of honeycomb. "It's all we found before he fell," he murmured apologetically, without looking at her.
She started to say it was better than nothing, noticed the discouraged slump of his shoulders, and changed it to a simple "thank you". His eyes flickered up, meeting her gaze swiftly, and the quiet appreciation in them struck her like a shaft to the heart. Unwillingly she felt her ire draining...oh, confound it; she couldn't detest him but neither could she like him, although...although she desperately wanted to, she realized, face warming. But the minute she let her guard down he'd be sure to say something that would spoil things all over again. Were all boys like that, or just assistant pig-keepers? Perhaps at Caer Dathyl she would meet a few more, and acquire some basis for comparison.
They set off again shortly thereafter, Eilonwy mounting Melyngar without complaint, for she was still weary, and there was no use repeating yesterday's mistakes. The others pushed Gurgi up behind her. His oddly-proportioned legs were better suited for squatting than for straddling a horse, and he had to slump against her back, arms draped around her waist, to stay upright. Taran had bound his wounded limb up in a sling, and the four hairy toes on his foot, each tipped with a blunt black claw, poked intermittently into her thigh. This was less offensive than his wet-hound odor, however, and in his distress he seemed to be shedding handfuls of hair, which kept coming off in clumps and stuck to her robe, or floated behind them in midair like mouse-colored, ungroomed pixies. Still, she could not be more than mildly put off; he was too pitifully anxious to please everyone, and kept exclaiming about the kindnesses of great lords and noble ladies, and declaring his willingness to fight with them if their enemies caught up. She patted the backs of his hands now and then comfortingly.
No one had seen a hint of the cauldron-born since early that morning, she discovered, but they were all tense now, and wary, daring not to assume they had outrun them. However, their pace was inevitably slower, and Taran and Fflewddur often stumbled. Every time it happened Eilonwy felt guiltily grateful to be riding, despite various discomforts which only grew as the day wore on. She thought of several stories she'd read, in which treks on horseback that went on for months were treated as routine, and groaned inwardly at the thought. Her hipbones ached from spanning Melyngar's broad back, and whenever they came to an open place where their pace could quicken, the mare broke into a bone-rattling trot that made her teeth knock together. Fflewddur, from the ground, gave her a few pointers on standing up in the stirrups and gripping with her knees in such moments, but between Gurgi's weight dragging at her from behind and her own lack of riding experience, it was all she could do to stay seated.
By early evening she felt nearly as spent as she had while running the day before, and when they paused midway down the slope of a hill to get their breath she threw a leg over and slid from the saddle with a groan. Gurgi, left behind, slumped forward over the place she'd been sitting, and lay still, whimpering.
She bent over nearly to the ground to stretch out her aching legs, while Taran scanned the land behind them anxiously. Surely they had managed to shake off those creatures after all this time. Even if the cauldron-born themselves did not tire, their horses would, and they had no hounds with which to scent a trail.
But the boy stiffened and beckoned to Fflewddur, pointing to a ridge less than a league away, where two figures had appeared against the sky, stiff as wooden puppets set upon their mounts. Her heart sank.
Taran scrubbed his sweaty face with the back of his sleeve. "It's no use. We must stand against them sooner or later." He turned to the bard. "Let it be now. There can be no victory against them, but if we can hold them off long enough for Gurgi and Eilonwy to escape, there is still a chance."
Eilonwy looked at him in surprise, wondering what sort of "chance" he meant. He had to know that standing against the cauldron-born meant not only defeat but death - and how far were she and Gurgi supposed to be able to get, with him wounded and she with only a hazy idea where to go from there?
Gurgi, from his perch on Melyngar, wailed in protest. "No, no! Faithful Gurgi stays with mighty lord who spared his poor tender head! Happy, grateful Gurgi will fight, too, with slashings and gashings..."
Fflewddur, who had laid his harp on the turf and tightened his swordbelt, wore a grim, grey look unlike anything she had seen upon his face until then. He cast a grimace back at Gurgi. "We appreciate your sentiments, but you're hardly up to slashing or gashing or anything at all."
The two warriors had sighted them and were moving quickly down over the edge of the ridge. Eilonwy watched; cold dread prickled at her scalp, but all at once indignation surged up, a wave of fury that seemed, somehow, to come from something outside of her, choking out fear and making her fists clench at her sides. Enough. No more. This is not what I was freed for.
Almost before the thought could finish forming she spoke it. "I'm not going to run anymore either. I'm sick of running and having my face scratched and my robe torn, all on account of those stupid warriors." Strong magic swept over her and took shape in her mind; a white-hot flame flared there, familiar - Dyrnwyn, of course; it was that sword at her back, fully awake and battle-ready, and she considered it with irritation. No use your butting in, you useless thing.
On sudden impulse she snatched a bow and several arrows from Taran's pack, and was pelting up the hill before he could react. She heard him shouting behind her, something about deathless men who couldn't be killed, as though she didn't know, as though she hadn't been living with the creatures for weeks. Well, there was more than one way to flay a prisoner, as Achren was fond of saying.
The great sword bounced around on her back as she ran, its power gathering and condensing like a mass of stormcloud, shot through with the crackling energy of lightning. No wonder Spiral Castle had felt so restless since the cauldron-born had arrived - the power that had forged this weapon was set against them with an intensity bordering on a personal, animate loathing. She had no doubt it could make short work of them, and the irony that so powerful a weapon couldn't actually be used by her or any of her companions only served to increase her ire.
At the top of the hill the land spread before her, a wide stretch of green turf spotted with grey stones, affording a clear shot at the cauldron warriors, who were closing in rapidly. She stopped at the top of a small knoll and had begun to string the bow, when Taran nearly bowled her over by seizing her around the waist from behind. Distracted by her own intent and the overwhelming force of Dyrnwyn's animosity, she had vaguely sensed he was chasing her but had not expected him to attempt to stop her by force; in outrage she struck out blindly. One foot made sharp contact with something and he yelped in pain and let her go.
"Must you always interfere with everything?" she screeched, shoving him out of the way and snatching at an arrow. She was unsure enough of what she was about to attempt without being assaulted by clueless assistant pig-keepers in the process.
Swiftly she scanned the sky, found the sun, and lined up the knocked arrow with its course. Strange words twisted and split around her tongue like threads of silver; an acrid, invisible current tore up from the earth, from the air around her and funneled into the arrow until its fletched end seared her fingers and she loosed it, holding her breath. If this didn't work, they were lost, all of them.
For a moment, a heartbeat, she rejoiced; at the apex of the arc the arrow slivered into silver streamers that ribboned through the air, thickening, branching out and lacing together into a glittering web that drifted down toward the horsemen. Beside her, Taran gasped and uttered a wordless cry of astonishment. Fflewddur, running up, breathlessly exclaimed. "Great Belin, what's that? It looks like decorations for a feast!"
A victorious smile froze on her face...something felt wrong; something was wrong; she knew it even before the charging horses tore through the webbing as though it were shreds of grey mist, and she dropped the remaining arrows in dismay. "It didn't work! When Achren does it, it turns into a big sticky rope." The strands were melting away into nothingness; the warriors came on, unabated. "Oh, it's all gone wrong. I tried to listen behind the door when she was practicing, but I've missed something important." In despair she turned away; the warriors would be upon them in a moment, and the sword at her back was filling her thoughts so painfully that, for a moment, she had no room for any of her own.
Taran yanked his blade out and planted his feet, shouting, "Take her away from here!" at Fflewddur, who had grabbed her arm halfheartedly, as though he knew it was no good. Under her feet the ground was rumbling with the hoofbeats of the approaching' horses; Drynwyn almost trembled with its own eagerness to destroy; its power swayed her bodily, crushingly heavy...
...and then it was gone, lifting off, leaving her light as a butterfly. Taran gave a cry of surprise, and she and Fflewddur turned to see the cauldron-born riding away, as expressionless as ever, even their horses as silent as death. "What in..." Fflewddur exclaimed. "It worked! It worked after all."
The metallic reek of magic filled her mouth and Eilonwy spat on the ground in disgust. "No. Something turned them away, but it wasn't my spell." Discouraged, she turned away. What was the use of all Achren's unpleasant lessons if she couldn't use any of them when it counted? Irritably she yanked the bowstring from its notch and gazed critically at the backs of the horsemen.
"I think I know what it was," Taran said, sliding his sword away. "They are returning to Arawn. Gwydion told me they cannot stay long from Annuvin. Their power must have been waning ever since we left Spiral Castle, and they reached the limit of their strength right here."
The warriors disappeared into the trees and Eilonwy scowled after them, personally affronted at their lack of reaction to her efforts. "I hope they don't make it back to Annuvin. I hope they fall into pieces or shrivel up like bats."
Taran shook his head. "I doubt that they will. They must know how long they can stay, and how far they can go, and still return to their master. But it doesn't matter; at least they're gone." He turned to her, face aglow and eyes gleaming golden-green in the warm light of the sinking sun. "That was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Gwydion had a mesh of grass that burst into flame, but I've never known anyone who could make a spiderweb out of nothing like that."
The open, frank admiration in his gaze was startling in its intensity; nobody had ever looked at her so, least of all him; between it and the brilliance of his eyes she found herself, for a moment, without the breath to speak. Her heart fluttered like a fledgling bird and pushed a flood of heat up her neck and into her face, bringing with it a giddy sensation of euphoria, and almost unconsciously she smiled at him. "Why, Taran of Caer Dallben. I think that's the first polite thing you've said to me."
His face, already golden in the light, flushed even darker; his returned smile was sincere and eager, and so pleasant that a nervous alarm went off in her mind. Chink in your armor.
Unwillingly, but unable to stop, she thought of his words the day before. You should be carrying a doll. Burdened with a girl. Nothing must hinder our task.
So, she had proven herself useful - almost - and now she was worth his attention? And here she was, blushing like a fool, ready to fall all over herself because he had noticed her. No, he hadn't even done that, had he? - just gotten his head turned by a magic trick. Barely a word to her for her own sake until then, but conjure a few solid strands of enchantment and suddenly she was "amazing". Well, see if she'd stand...or fall...for that.
"I should have known," she said, breaking away from his gaze in a huff and turning on her heel. "It's all about the spiderweb. That's all you care about; not whether I was in danger." Ignoring his awkward protest, she stalked down the slope toward Melyngar, conflicting emotions pricking at her like goads. That wasn't quite fair to him, a quiet, reproachful inner voice intoned. She sniffed at it crossly. Fair would be to ignore him until he did something astonishing, and so far he hadn't managed to do more than blunder along.
But, said the inner voice, remember what Fflewddur said, how he didn't complain about your having to be carried. "Humph," she said out loud, startling Melyngar, who pricked an ear back at her mildly. Common decency, that, and he owed it to her after all his big talk the morning before. She wasn't going to forget all that now, just thanks to a few pretty words and moon-calf eyes. Even if they did look striking, under those dark brows of his...she shook her head hastily, annoyed with herself. Honestly. Besides, last time she had let herself like him he had made her cry within minutes.
Nobody was going to make her cry anymore.