Uthas felt the words like a hammer blow, her words sealing his future.
‘But we must know of what is happening beyond our borders. Domhain cannot remain closed to us. You will lead a company south, learn what you can of Eremon’s plans.’
‘As you command, my Queen,’ Uthas said.
‘Choose who you will, but not too many. Speed will serve you better than strength in numbers. And avoid Rath’s notice.’
‘I will do as you say.’
A sharp cry rang out from the chamber behind them. The woman on the bed was sitting upright, sweat-darkened hair clinging to her face, eyes wild and bulging. Balur gripped her hand, murmuring to her.
‘Ethlinn, what have you seen?’ Nemain asked.
The pale-faced woman took a shuddering breath. ‘They are coming,’ she whispered. ‘The Kadoshim draw ever closer. They feel the cauldron. The Black Sun, he is coming to make them flesh. He is coming for the cauldron.’
CHAPTER TWO
CYWEN
Cywen woke slowly, like the tide creeping in.
First she felt. A dull throbbing in her head, her shoulder, her hip. She ached everywhere, she realized, but worse in those places. Then she heard. Groaning, low voices, the thud of footfalls, a dragging, scraping sound, and behind it the cry of gulls and the distant murmur of the sea. She tried to open her eyes; one was crusted shut. Daylight felt like a knife jabbing into her head. Where am I? She looked about and saw warriors in red cloaks dragging bodies across the stone-paved courtyard, leaving blood-smeared trails across the cobbles, piling them onto a heaped mound of corpses.
Suddenly it all came flooding back, memory upon memory tumbling together: talking on the wall with Marrock, Evnis in the courtyard, the black-clothed warriors within the walls, the gates opening, Conall . . .
There was something soft beneath her. She was sprawled upon a body, a female, staring at her with lifeless eyes. Staggering she climbed upright, the world spinning briefly before it settled.
Stonegate was wide open, a trickle of people passing in and out of the fortress, most in the red cloaks of Narvon. Columns of black smoke marked the pale sky, a soft breeze from the sea tugging at them, blurring where smoke ended and sky began.
The battle is lost, then. Dun Carreg is fallen.
Then another thought cut through the fog filling her mind. My family.
She looked at the bodies strewn about her, remembered falling with Conall but could not see him amongst the dead. Her mam and da’s faces flashed through her mind, Corban, then Gar’s. Where was everyone?
She left the courtyard unchallenged and drifted slowly through the streets, following the trail of the dead. They were littered everywhere, sometimes in mounds where the fighting had raged fiercer, some still locked together in a macabre embrace. The smell of smoke and fire grew thicker the deeper she walked into the fortress. Her feet took her to the stables. There were more warriors here, red-cloaked men tending wild-eyed horses. She glimpsed Corban’s stallion Shield in the paddock, then he was gone, lost amongst the herd gathered there.
Where is Gar?
As if in a dream she walked on, peering at the faces of the dead, searching for her family, relieved every time a lifeless face was not one of them. Her search continued, becoming more frantic until she found herself in the courtyard before the feast-hall.
Another pile of the dead was heaped here, greater even than the one before Stonegate. Warriors were everywhere, wounded, covered in ash and blood. In one corner Cywen saw the grey-cloaks of Ardan, the defeated warriors gathered together, many injured. They were guarded by a cohort of Owain’s men.
A great ululation came from the feast-hall. Something – a board, a tabletop – was being carried from the entranceway. As Cywen watched, it was hoisted upright and leaned with a thud against one of the columns that supported the entrance. A body was fixed to the board, covered in blood but still recognizable. Cywen’s stomach lurched.
Brenin. His head was lolling, arms twisted, wrists and ankles nailed to the tabletop. A great bloom of blood surrounding the wound in his chest. Cywen spat bile onto the stained cobblestones, motes of ash falling softly about her like black snow.
She wiped her mouth and stumbled towards the hall’s doors, eyes fixed on Brenin’s corpse.
‘Please, Elyon, All-Father,’ she prayed, ‘let my kin still live.’ She stopped before Brenin, stood staring up at him until a warrior bumped into her and told her to get out of the way. She glared at him.