So it was a relief when, after a night and two days of hard riding, he reached Bryngodre to find his mother already there, already with a plan.
* * *
She let him sleep for a few hours before they began.Only a few.He woke to learn that the anakriarch had arrived before him and been held as something between a guest and a prisoner.He learned, too, that his uncle had yet to reach Bryngodre.Troubling news, not yet his responsibility.
‘You have taken on too much,’ his mother said, in the room of the inn she had prepared for him.They sat on the bed, the silk of her gown cool and soft against his cheek, dampened by his tears.He had enough control of himself to stifle the weeping, but not enough to dam it entirely.Her hand cradled his head while she shushed and comforted him.All the posturing for power, all the push and pull between her role as his regent and his as the ascendant king forgotten.
The sky had opened.Horror had rained down.What he needed, then, was not the respect due a royal, but comfort.And she had given it, and whispered her plan to put everything right.
For reasons he had never understood—and would never understand, now—his father had refused to attune with the Old Stones, and thereby refused a full awakening of Abal’s Hammer and the restoration of the druids’ power.Owyn remembered this as a tension between his mother and father, simmering all the length of his life.It felt a betrayal that his father had thrown himself from the tower before explaining such things.Abandoned his son to navigate the dark waters of rule with only brief, half-remembered lessons for guidance.
Owyn would make a poor king.He felt this as surely as he felt the warmth of his blood.One glimpse of battle, and his courage had buckled.A crisis in his kingdom, and he had retreated into himself, following the guidance of first Uli, and then his mother, without question.
Maybe Ifan had known it, too.Had discerned Owyn’s weakness in some seemingly insignificant moment riding on the hunt, or tussling in the courtyard of Glascoed while their fathers looked on, or venturing out to the brothels of Parwys, encouraged by whisky and wine to seek those secret pleasures at the boundary of adulthood.Maybe Owyn’s father had known.Had thrown himself from the tower in part because he knew the strength of Abal’s line was lost.
Thoughts that gnawed at the back of his mind while she led him into the tower.He held the hammer.Felt the cold texture of it, like oiled glass.It seemed to grow heavier as he traversed that strange hallway of red brick walls that connected the wider world to the eerie space within.The druids of Bryngodre awaited them; one stood over a hunched figure on the far side of the circle of the Old Stones.
‘The gwyddien woman,’ his mother told him, noting his confusion.‘Better not to leave her in the castle, I thought.Here, her power might be put to some use, if unwillingly.’
Uli Boar-arm moved to stand guard over her.She sat wrapped in raw iron chains at the heart of a circle carved into the earth and filled with rose thorns.Acrid white smoke trickled from her.Yet her face showed nothing—no agony, not even frustration, as though she had chosen to be bound.Owyn shuddered at that, but said nothing.He was past the point of questioning, determined only to submit himself to his mother’s purpose.To be whatever kind of king Parwys needed, to the best of his capacity, knowing that it would not be enough.At least no one—neither living, nor any historian of his kingdom’s fall—could point to Owyn son Elbrech and accuse him of cowardice.Weakness, perhaps.Youthful incompetence, certainly.But he would face down horror and rise, as best his mind and body could rise, to meet it.
The druids formed a ring around the Old Stones and began to chant in the secret tongue of their power.His mother led him into the circle bounded by the Old Stones.Her steps traced a winding path towards the altar, following the borders of a labyrinth he could not sense or see.A scent of loam and thunder filled the air.
The scent deepened with every step.A weight descended on him, as though the Old Stones themselves were settling on his shoulders.A low buzzing issued from the hammer.It trembled in his hands.And then he began to tremble.His vision narrowed until he saw only his mother and the next step he had to take.
‘You are strong,’ Medrith whispered over her shoulder.‘You are the scion of Abal the Protector.’
Owyn nodded and took another step.The trembling became a pulsing pain.Only prickles, at first, as though his limbs had fallen asleep.Then lightning burned through his muscles.
His jaw ached with the need to cry out.He tasted blood.
Another step.They were turning inwards, now, towards the altar.Not much further.He could feel the gaze of the Old Stones, as though ancient eyes peered out from the runes and circles carved into their faces.Considering.Judging.Deciding whether he truly deserved the gift and burden of their power.
A part of him hoped for failure.Surely the druids would choose a different king if the Old Stones rejected him.Someone more worthy.Better able to endure the hard decisions demanded by such dark times.
The pain became a fire in his bones.Every step like dragging his feet through boiling mercury.A dark tunnel defined the scope of his vision.Only his mother’s head and shoulders, leading him inwards.Blood pulsed behind his ears, and a rushing wind filled them, drowning out all sound.In the silence, he heard the howling of the dead.The same voices that had driven his father to his death, and had dogged him ever since.
The hammer felt as heavy as lead and as slick and cold as ice.It wanted to slip through his fingers.To fall to the earth and shatter, and with it shatter all hope for Parwys’s future.Alberon would rush across the river.Galca storm over the mountains.Salus send ships into the Roaring Bay.His kingdom—his father’s kingdom—would fall.
Unless he found the strength to seize this hammer, hold it fast and bring it down.To crush them without mercy.To carry the pain that seared through him so that he might inflict it on his enemies.As Abal had done.
The howling in his mind redoubled.A chorus of voices in a language he could not speak, but whose meaning was clear.Anger.Grief.A depthless hunger for revenge.
He remembered—as he took those final steps, his every joint and sinew of his body taut and agonised—the ghostly visitation of Fola the sorceress.She had warned him, hadn’t she?Told him that his kingdom was founded on pain such as this.That the wraiths that howled in his mind and lurked in the shadowed corners of his tent were the spirits of its victims.That to rule, he had to be willing to make more.More dead.More ghosts.More horrors to gaze down from the blackened sky, to reach out with tearing hands and scream.
No pain inflicted on the world ever ends.It can be quieted.Smothered.But always an ember, a last breath, remains.In the hearts of those who remember.In the anguished spirits of the dead.
‘It is not too much,’ he heard his mother snarl.
She was arguing with someone.One of the other druids was insisting that they stop the ritual, that they slow the pace of Owyn’s inward journey.There was a reason, he said, that attunement took place over a fortnight.Each day, another step nearer the altar.
‘We do not have time,’ Medrith said.‘He must shoulder the burden now, or there will be no more kingdom to defend, no more burden to shoulder.Do you doubt the strength of my son?’
The air itself pressed against him, as though he was wading through a thickening fog.Each breath was a labour.The hammer had grown heavier and the edges of the braided haft dug into him, pressing through the meat of his palms, grinding against the bones of his fingers.Pain and fear became panic, an urge to turn and flee, to lay down pain and power.
Medrith turned to him.He saw in her eyes a reflection of his own fear.She, too, had lost his father—her husband.Who had refused this rite, this power, when he rose to the crown.Who had thrown himself from his unfinished tower rather than shoulder it and face the haunting.
‘Come, Owyn,’ she said.‘My prince.My king.Not much further now.Be strong.’
