A Whisper of Darkness Read online

  A Whisper of Darkness

  Dark Fantasy in Post Arthurian Britain

  Troy A. Hill

  Copyright © 2019 by Troy A. Hill

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design by Troy A. Hill

  Images via Deposit Photos

  Created with Vellum

  For Carol

  Thanks for letting me play with my imaginary friends

  Contents

  The Teulu

  1. Climbing

  2. Knife of Crystal

  3. A Gap in the Wall

  4. The Forges

  5. Dragon Fire

  6. Distractions

  7. Visitors

  8. Into the Dark

  9. Traces of Shadow

  10. Silver issues

  11. Two Score Head

  12. Tamworth

  13. Lady in Waiting

  14. Eyes and Ears

  15. Old Friends

  16. Brother Twm

  17. A Scent of Rose

  18. A Night of Practice

  19. A Walk in the Moonlight

  20. Her Champion

  21. A Need

  22. Silver Tongues

  23. A Crack in the Wall

  24. Alliances

  25. Her Grace

  26. Of Blood and Battle

  27. A Friend Returns

  28. Into the Night

  29. The Queen's Word

  30. Funerals

  31. Darkness Descends

  32. Weapons

  33. On the Scent

  34. Camp

  35. Breaking Dark

  36. Unwelcome Guests

  37. Pursuit

  38. A Quiet Night

  39. Whispers in the Dark

  40. Into the Dark

  41. Long Shadows

  42. Light in the Darkness

  43. A flood of Shadows

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  The adventure continues

  Welsh Pronunciations

  Glossary

  The Teulu

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  1

  Climbing

  Ruadh’s meaty arm swept out and caught my hand as the rock broke loose. Shifter reflexes. Fast. As fast as mine. That was what kept me from plunging into the valley below.

  True, the rock face of the cliff sloped away from the valley. Iolo had called it an easy climb. He glanced down.

  “The big bear has saved me many times in just such situations,” he called. “Do be careful, milady. I prefer not to lose a new friend.”

  “You’re sure this climb is worth it?” I asked.

  “Definitely,” Iolo replied as he turned back to the rock wall. “Once you see the view from the cave ledge, you’ll gasp and fall in love with your holding all over again.”

  “The valley is pretty enough from below,” I said and swung out of Ruadh’s grasp back to the rocks. This section was almost vertical, unlike the steep but sloped section below. “I don’t know why you two have to climb every cliff you find. There has to be a path to the top of this mountain.”

  “Aye, lass,” Ruadh said, laughing behind me as I ascended. One handhold, then a foothold. Then another handhold. “The sunset will take your breath away.”

  “I don’t have to breathe, silly. I’m dead.”

  “Aye, but you’ll want to lose a breath up there,” my friend replied. “Bleddyn gave you prime land. Had Caer Penllyn no need to be close to the trade roads to get horses out to the other lords and kings, he would move his caer board by board to this summit. ’Tis a beautiful sight from on high.”

  More gravel came loose on my next handhold. Rather than chance that grip, I reached wider and used a different section of the crack. The dislodged pebbles tinked several times as they clattered down the wall.

  “This better be worth it,” I grumbled, but I kept climbing.

  A few moments later, a hand and an arm dropped towards me. I gripped it and let Iolo pull me across the lip. The thin monk clambered easily onto the ledge.

  “Welcome to our little cave away from home,” he said, his eyes alight with mirth.

  By the time I stepped away from the edge of the lip, Ruadh was pulling himself up. Once on the ledge, he loosened the strap on the pack he carried. The thinner monk untied a folding stool from the outer ties and sat on it, and then he rummaged about inside the pack. Both men wore trousers and tunics. I matched them with a set of trousers and a tunic, which was what I called my “sword clothes.” I had stopped wearing dresses after the battle against the undead army at the abbey.

  “Must you draw this soon?” I chided Iolo. He had pulled out his wooden lap desk, which was just a wooden board with a piece of smooth leather affixed to one side, another leather strap over that to hold his vellum in place, and a small covered well full of ground charcoal.

  “I don’t want to miss the light,” he said, flashing me a grin as he fished a wooden stylus from the pack.

  “Pass me that skin, lass,” Ruadh muttered.

  I handed him the wineskin from the pack. He untied the end and squirted a stream into his open mouth. One of his thick hands wiped a residual drop or two from his shaggy red whiskers. They were orangish in the sunlight that reflected off the short mountainside.

  I looked off down the land. A steep valley for this part of Britain lay before us, running towards the north-west. Below, patches of trees stood with some farmland, and a small house or three dotted the valley floor at this end. A muddy yet still bluish river drifted lazily through the valley. Above, snow still clung to the upper reaches of the smooth peak.

  “You’re right,” I said as Ruadh stepped between me and Iolo. “The view from here is stupendous.”

  The other monk was sketching the landscape on his parchment. His stylus seemed to have a life of its own, guiding Iolo’s hand. The monk’s eyes rarely darted down to the parchment. The snow-capped ridge across from us was already taking shape.

  I took the skin from Ruadh and stowed it. Iolo’s busy hand and darting eyes told me he wouldn’t even think of wine until he could no longer see. And, with his fae nature, he was like Ruadh and I. Darkness was no reason to not see. There was the light of the stars to fill in the void. It took a deep cave, like the one behind us, to make me wish for light. Even then, I could see enough to move about.

  “Light,” Iolo said, sensing my unasked question. “It’s about light and shadow. The shadows are long, and the light is soft right now. I can only see this combination right now to draw it. Once the elegance of this sunset is gone, all I have is flat texture instead of this beautiful sight. I need to draw while I can see the shadows.”

  Ruadh’s hand rested on Iolo’s shoulder. His other arm wrapped my waist and pulled me in close.

  “Aye, lass,” he rumbled. “There be beauty across Briton if ye know where to look.”

  “The soft light this time of day makes even Ruadh look pretty,” Iolo said. He glanced at me and winked. Ruadh laughe
d. I did, too. These two, once Iolo returned, had proved to be almost inseparable. Only when Abbot Heilyn sent one or the other out on an errand alone did they part.

  The valley, the mountains, the land itself—everything was gorgeous. And it was home. After six centuries of undead life, I had found my home, my family, here on the edge of our world. Here in Penllyn.

  I leaned in to Ruadh and wrapped my arm around him as we stared off at the landscape. My friend was warm. He still smelled of bear. Even though The Lady, our goddess, had removed the ties between his curse and the moon, he was still a shifter. In a fortnight, the full moon would rise again, and he wouldn’t care. He had not needed to change into his other form the last several months.

  Iolo’s stylus flew about the parchment in the dying light. The rough outline of the valley took shape. I saw the rock walls, the grassy slopes leading up to them, and the thin rivulet of the river below.

  “It’s a pretty valley,” I said. Then I glanced back towards the western end of the long gorge. The walls there looked solid. No danger of a slide. “Be a pity to block that stream,” I said.

  Ruadh must have sensed my hesitation. He gave my waist a squeeze.

  “Agreed,” he said with a mirth rumble in his chest. “An overzealous beaver could block the river and flood the valley for a ways. This rock be stable. You’ll not be seeing a dam here unless one of those rats builds one.”

  “There are slides,” I said and pointed into the dim reaches below. By now the sun was below the horizon, and the red was fast fading into deep twilight blue.

  “Small ones, yes,” he said. “It would take a major shake to dislodge enough to block the mouth.”

  “Be a shame to block off this valley,” I said and gave him a smile. “Where else would you two go to climb?”

  “I’d take ye up to my brother’s land,” he said. “If Kerr and Frang ever settle their blood feud. One of them I can deal with. But as long as the clan is split between them, I cannae go back.”

  “I’ve lost many brothers over the years,” I said. My mind darted back to the last time I had been with Aemi, my brother of the undead. We had danced the dance of blades for almost a week solid, only stopping each day for our undead sleep when the sun rose, then when we awoke, we’d let our steel sing once more.

  We weren’t brothers in the normal way. Aemi… Aemilianus had been born to another set of parents a century or so before I had been born. But we share a bond deeper than the one with the siblings from my birth mother. Aemi and our other undead siblings all become undead through the same master.

  If there was anyone I loved as much as Gwen, Emlyn, or Aemi, it was my master. He offered me almost pure immortality. All I needed to do was die. And drink his blood. The same blood he drank from my veins.

  Our master was long dead. The True Death. And then my undead brothers and I had gone our separate ways. Aemi and I, we hadn’t danced our dance of the blades for nearly a century.

  Ruadh pulled me in tighter. He was as close as a brother to me. We had fought battles together to protect our adoptive family. Lord and Lady Penllyn and their people.

  I leaned into my bearish friend. Just like the others here in this British cantref, he was a friend and family to me. I had found my home. A home I wished to never leave again. Penllyn. Life was good here, finally. And I was happy. The trials of last year were fading into memory, and I was comfortable again.

  I should have known things were about to change, but I didn’t. Neither did I realise just how bad they would get.

  2

  Knife of Crystal

  The sound of rock cracking echoed into the twilight air atop the hill.

  Ruadh jerked me backward. I grabbed at Iolo. He was intent on his drawing and didn’t sense the tingle in the stone ledge under our feet. His stylus continued to drift across the drawing board as the stone slipped away under him.

  The rock of the ledge sighed and split, then it tumbled loose and plummeted into the valley. I slid forward, relying on Ruadh’s bulk, and his meaty hand grasped mine as I snatched at our absent-minded monk’s tunic. Iolo’s folding stool, made of canvas and wood, clattered as it bounced with the stone.

  But I had Iolo’s tunic.

  “Hold on,” he said, his stylus still moving as he dangled. “The light is almost gone, and I want to get that last outcropping drawn while I can see it.”

  Behind me, Ruadh let a laugh rumble in his chest. He used his thick body to lean back and sideways towards the wall of the cliff. I had my foot braced against his front foot. We each grabbed the other’s wrist. I leaned out over the chasm, still holding Iolo. The skinny monk was no burden with my undead strength. I hoped the fabric of his tunic could bear the burden.

  “Pull him up, lass,” Ruadh said. “He’ll keep us here all night if you don’t.”

  I gave him a three count, then heaved Iolo onto the now thin ledge.

  “Fool,” I said, but I grinned. “You’ll die trying to draw while you fall.”

  “Nah, not ’im, lass,” Ruadh said. “He’s half fae. Always got a spell up his sleeve. He always drifts down like a feather when a rock gives way.”

  Still, despite the grumbles in his tone, Ruadh helped Iolo up and pulled him in for a one-armed hug. His other arm pulled me close, too.

  “Thank ye, Mair,” he said and scraped his beard across my cheek to lay a kiss there. He turned and planted another on Iolo’s cheek. “I wasn’t of a mind to go chasing him down the cliff after we climbed up here.”

  Iolo leaned into the wall and stared off at the valley wall opposite us again then shook his head.

  “Bother,” he muttered and slid down the wall to sit, his feet flat, knees raised, and his drawing board across his lap. The leather strap across the board kept his drawing in place. He leaned forward and blew across the paper. Some of the charcoal powder he dipped his stylus into had scattered across his drawing. Fortunately, a lid covered the well .

  Iolo held up a hand and muttered a word. A thin orb of yellow light sprang above his fingers.

  “Yellow,” I said and activated my connection to the goddess. The mystical cord of black and gold that tied me to her hummed as I tried to find a similar cord from the monk.

  “You’ll not find whatever you’re looking for,” he said, grinning. “Fae magic differs from the old druidic ways.”

  “Is that what I am now, a druid?” The goddess of Britannia had made our connection, and just like with my sisters in service, Gwen and Seren, I was bound to the goddess by cords of magic. These cords weren’t to be a leash. Instead they acted as conduits. The goddess fed me energy, the land’s energy, that allowed me to walk in the daylight, unlike other undead.

  “Female druids would be dryads,” he said with a chuckle. “No. Unlike Lady Gwen, your magic is rooted in death. Or undeath.”

  “Does everyone know what I am?” I grumbled. I tried to hide my nature, but Iolo had sensed it the first time we met.

  “When ye go running around waving Arthur’s glowing sword,” Ruadh said, “everyone be too distracted to pay attention to your diet.”

  “I threw that sword into the lake,” I said. The Sword of Light. Last held by Arthur, Gwen’s long-dead husband, and king of most of Britain when he lived. It was the weapon I needed that night, and the goddess had sent it to me. It was the sword I used to break the necromancer’s staff.

  “Lady Seren said the wizard’s staff was full of magic,” Ruadh rumbled again. We had been rolling this discussion around since that battle. “You broke it and made the earth shake. Had Lady Gwen not been there to protect us, many would have died in that blast.”

  “I’m still miffed at her for not letting me know she was alive after the goddess took her to the Otherworld.”

  Iolo laughed again. “Lady Gwen was dead,” he said. “It is rare for someone to pass the veil and be allowed back.” He glanced at me. “Your kind is one of the few that can make that journey without divine help. Lady Gwen is very special for the goddess to have allow
ed her to return to us.”

  “Yes, she is special,” I said. My mind reached out to find her presence. She was back at Caer Penllyn. Although we could speak with our thoughts across the leagues, there was no need. Gwen was one of two pieces missing from my heart. My mind touched hers, and we shared the warmth of love.

  “Come, lass,” Ruadh said, and he pushed himself off the rock wall. “That blast of yours loosened the ledge. I wanna see if the cave behind us had much damage.”

  “Need another light?” Iolo asked, still drawing.

  “Diolch,” I said. “Thanks” in the Cymry tongue. “But no. That’s one of the only magics I can do.” I held my hand aloft. A whitish ball appeared above my hand.

  “Try to make it more yellowish,” Iolo said. “That way if someone below sees the glow, they’ll think it a lamp or a torch.”

  I shrugged, unsure how to do that. The goddess’s magic had always come through as white light.

  “Like this,” Iolo said and touched his own ball. The glow warmed. I thought I detected what he was doing. I poked my light ball. It shifted to pink, then blue. I concentrated and tried to get it to settle into an amber glow. Ruadh laughed out loud at my cascade of colours. I glared at him, but a chuckle escaped my own lips. If anyone relied on me for magic, they were in trouble.