John Gwynne - Valour

And behind all of this was the thought, the possibility, the hope , that Corban and Gar and her mam were hiding in the tunnels beneath Dun Carreg. It was a vision that she clung to, that helped her to rise from sleep every day and put strength in her limbs. All she wanted to do was get a torch and go searching for them, but on the morning after her meeting with Nathair she had noticed a shadow following her as she’d made her way to the stables. Conall . That night someone else had stood in the shadow of a doorway opposite her house. All night. She was being watched and she could not lead people — the enemy — to the hidden tunnels where Edana might be hiding.

But she could not wait forever; her need to know was a physical sensation in the pit of her stomach. And with that, suddenly, she was done waiting, a plan forming in her mind.

She took the eggs indoors, the last of the day melting into dusk. Quickly she gathered all she needed: a bundle of rush torches, flint and tinder, a bag to put it all in, and buckled her belt of knives across her shoulder. She gave Buddai a thick marrow bone she’d traded for with the butcher earlier. Then, as the shadows were dissolving into night, she stepped into her back garden and agilely scaled the rose wall at the garden’s far end, slipping almost invisibly through her neighbour’s courtyard and into the street beyond.

Cywen stood staring at the beach. Something was wrong, different.

She had entered the tunnels through the hidden doorway in the fortress high above, made her way slowly through them, and now she was standing in a cave that looked out on the beach and bay. It was still night, dawn a long way off, although she had spent long hours searching the tunnels for her kin. Only at the end had she found evidence that they had been in the tunnels at all — the dead wyrm and warrior nearby, lying in the cavern at the end of this cave. But they were not here now. She felt drained, defeated.

They were gone.

Had they escaped into Havan, then made their way to the marshes in the west that everyone was saying were where Ardan’s survivors were fleeing?

A full moon silvered the bay and beach, shimmering on wave-tops and shingle alike. The only shape in the bay was Nathair’s ship, bobbing on the swell of the tide, huge compared to the fishing vessels on the beach. The fisher-boats were lined along the shore, none out at sea, as all able-bodied men had been taken to the fortress and forced into labouring at defences for Owain as he prepared for the coming of Queen Rhin. I hope she rips his heart out, she thought. Or the other way round. Either way it is one less that’ll need killing.

Then she realized what was different. A boat was missing, the only boat she’d ever had cause to look for.

Dath’s boat.

She checked again, studying the outline of each boat slumped in the shingle. It was definitely not there. So they had sailed away — her mam, Corban, Gar, Edana and the rest. But where to? The thought of following reared first in her mind, but follow them where? Perhaps they’d sailed west to the marshes, but perhaps they hadn’t. There was no obvious course, and they would have been scared, maybe injured among them, the need just to get away driving them.

She sighed, long and deep, then turned and made her way back into the cave, striking sparks into a fresh torch once she had turned a corner on the narrow path, hiding her from anyone looking from the beach.

She slipped once on the sea-soaked path that snaked into the cave, then pushed through the glamour and found herself inside the great cavern where the dead wyrm and warrior lay. She gave them hardly a glance as she strode through the room, eager to be back home. Ever up she climbed, the tunnels high and wide, built by giants. Shadows flickered and water dripped, echoing. In time, Cywen found herself in the other cavern, where the skeleton of another wyrm lay, the one she had found with Ban when they had first discovered these hidden tunnels that bored into the cliffs beneath Dun Carreg. As she passed through the tunnel, something caught her eye — a reflection on the far wall. She paused, thoughts of her warm fire and curling up next to Buddai calling to her, but her inquisitiveness won and she walked away from the exit, raising her torch high, looking at the wall.

She blinked, eyes widening. There was the outline of a great creature on the rock. At first she thought that it had been painted on, but as she held her torch closer she saw that she was wrong. They were bones, embedded, fossilized into the rock. The creature had a mouth full of sharp teeth, wings that spread as wide as a fisher-boat. Her da had told tales of creatures, whole species that had existed before the Scourging, great monsters that had been wiped out in Elyon’s day of wrath, caught in either flood or fire. She reached up, her fingertips tracing long talons.

Nearby there was a darker shadow in the rock wall — she moved closer and saw that it was an entrance to another tunnel, disguised somehow by a curve in the rock. She peered back at her route home, then looked into the new tunnel.

She took a deep breath and stepped into this new tunnel, driven by curiosity.

It was much the same as those she had already searched, high walled, smooth and damp. It turned more, giving the sense of spiralling, somehow, though it was hard to tell. In time she noticed a change ahead of her — it sounded different, the drip of water louder, a deeper echo. She stepped into an opening, a black hole spreading before her. A chain hung through its middle, disappearing above and below into darkness.

This is the keep’s well , she thought, peering up, the darkness a solid thing, consuming her torchlight. The path she was on hugged the well, narrower, twisting upwards. She followed it as the tunnel bored back into the rock, leaving the gaping hole that was the well behind. She breathed a sigh of relief.

It was not long before she stepped into another cavern. At first she thought it was a dead end, but then saw lines of faint light flickering on the far wall. She moved closer, then with a hiss of exhaled breath stubbed her torch out.

It was a door.

She approached it slowly and upon closer examination realized that it was a door frame, with wide planks of wood nailed across it. She peered through one of the gaps, seeing a room beyond, filled with barrels, crates, bottles. Some kind of storage room — a cellar? A torch burned in a sconce on a wall. So this room led into the fortress; it was inhabited. And whoever it was knew of the tunnels, had access to them.

The board she was leaning against gave way; with a creak its nails pulled out of the frame. She fell forward with it and found herself leaning half in, half out of the room.

She froze, too scared to move, too scared to breathe.

To her relief, no one came running. It was as she thought, a cellar of some kind. At the far end of the room steps rose up and disappeared into the ceiling.

A sound caused her to go rigid again. It came from behind a closed door in the room. She was about to bolt when she heard it again. A voice, weak, little more than a whisper.

‘Water, please,’ the voice said.

Before she could think about what she was doing, she had squirmed through the gap in the doorway, spilling onto a flagstone floor. She hurried over to the closed door, saw it was locked.

‘I know you’re there,’ the voice rasped. ‘I can see the shadow of your feet.’

She stepped away.

‘Please, just some water.’

Cywen pulled the door, a chain rattling around an iron ring, then drew one of her knives and worried at the lock’s hinge, which was bolted to the door frame. It seemed to be the weakest part, but there was no give in it.