The cauldron effect, p.79
The Cauldron Effect, page 79
Her eyes widened in surprise. “Do you intend to keep that promise?”
Fair question.
Lleland still owed her husband a penance for taunting Lucifer with his new protégé, a warlock willing to die to defend his friend’s waters. Which was why, when Dewer entered his underwater realm, Lleland had seized the opportunity to cancel that long overdue obligation, and help himself, too.
Still, Dewer had obviously suffered from a lack of fatherly guidance. Case in point, his waiting for their mothers’ approval before consummating his relationship with Grace was the epitome of foolishness.
A man needed no permission to claim a willing heart. He had told Dewer so. Not that the lad paid any attention. Showed the warlock was as stubborn as Llyr. Children! That thought gave him the perfect idea.
“Yes,” he said. “I will teach him all he needs to know, as if he were my own son.”
Her motherly gaze instantly softened.
Lleland smothered his glee. Almost mine!
DEWER KNEW ONE PERSON who might know why he could suddenly see as if he were in the upper world. He tightened his grip on his staff and mind spoke to the water god. “Are you responsible for this?”
No answer.
“Lleland? Can you hear me?”
“What?” He sounded distracted and breathless
“Are you responsible for helping me see past Lucifer’s veil?” Dewer asked. What was he doing inside the staff?
“Not I!” Lleland said, surprised. “I do not have such power in this fiery realm. Is it hotter than when we arrived?”
Was it? Is that why Dewer was so thirsty? Lucifer must have increased the heat just to make every creature here miserable. He excelled at subverting a person’s will power, and causing physical discomfort to weaken his enemy’s resistance would be the first pick from his arsenal. If Dewer were not so determined to succeed, he might have been tempted to go in search of a drink. He cocked his head. Was that a waterfall in the distance? He licked his dry lips and imagined cool water cascading over his hot perspiring skin.
“I do sense divine inspiration behind this little visual miracle,” Lleland said, interrupting Dewer’s wandering thoughts. “Ah, I see the source now. A blessing Farfur received by the Laneast well.”
“What blessing?” he asked, feeling lost again.
“The one that primed him to become your familiar. Since he is a creature of darkness, only the Creator’s blessing allows Farfur to be a vehicle for bringing the power of light into the underworld. You, too, are able to sip from that well because you finally finished your bonding ritual by opening your heart to him. Took you long enough.”
Dewer absorbed that wealth of information in astonishment, his thirst forgotten. Grace had said something similar before she left. About the Creator leading her to the dark entity. That they were being watched over, so he would be helped in this fight. If so, and this clarity of vision suggested she might be right, then he hoped she was also correct about him being shown the way back to her. Then another aspect of this mystery that had been puzzling him surfaced and he again reached for the water god.
“Lleland?”
“I’m busy.”
“Doing what? Is my mother all right?”
“She is awake and sends you her blessing. Now what is your question? It will be your last for the next half hour. I had forgotten how annoyingly interrupting boys could be.”
Dewer shrugged aside the insult of being labelled a boy. Knowing his mother was recovering set his mind at ease. Awake, she was also more than capable of handling Lleland. Now, if this was to be his last question for a while, he’d better make it count. “What did you do to annoy Lucifer, that he felt the need to personally destroy you?”
Once again, silence was his response. Nearby, nervous monsters broke into occasional bloody fights. Did Lleland plan to ignore him? Not that it was hard to imagine all the maddening things Lleland might have done. He was entirely difficult to get along with.
“We used to occasionally play chess,” the water god said in such a soft tone, Dewer almost missed it. “He mistakenly assumed that meant we were friends. One day, he made a request, I refused, and he took offense.”
“What request?” Dewer asked, intrigued.
Lleland gave a heavy sigh but then he answered. “Humans are notoriously easy to manipulate, despite having the gift of free will. Give them a few dark days, some spoilt crops, an occasional lightning strike, and they believe their God has deserted them. Lucifer wanted me to rain on England, non-stop, while he worked to entice a few souls his way.”
“It has been raining hard in England for the past few months,” Dewer said with concern. “Is that of your doing?”
“I said I refused. The thin-skinned serpent took offense and decided to ensure the matter himself. He swore he would make me pay for what he considered my disloyalty. Your father offered to find out what he planned. I had just received your father’s message about an effort underway to create the dark entity when he was murdered.”
Lleland had Dewer’s undivided attention.
“For almost a decade, all remained quiet, so I hoped Lucifer had grown tired of this particular game. Then, a few years ago, word came that he was stirring a series of mountains in Asia, causing volcanoes to erupt, which in turn began to have a startling effect on the weather. I attempted to protect England. Then the worst eruption happened last summer. Ash blew in our direction, peppering the clouds. I am unsure how he could have managed it, but by winter, even the sun grew cooler, temperatures dropped and it would not stop raining. I might have still been able to help, except Lucifer had finally succeeded in creating the dark entity that consumes life and released it into my water.”
“You took ill,” Dewer finished.
“The insidious creature infected every portion of my waters. The only way I could stop it was by restricting its movement and absorbing what particles escaped. That resulted in the very thing I hoped to avoid. With me no longer at full power, the rains poured. Now go and find this monstrosity, so we can obliterate it and be done with the constant downpour. I will take care of your mother.”
In a thoughtful mood, Dewer cautiously wove his way through the throng of demons that seemed to be thousands deep. A flare burst to his right, right beneath a three-legged creature. It screamed in agony before it, too, was consumed, leaving naught but charred earth.
How many more would die before Dewer succeeded in his mission? A thread of sympathy stirred. Grace must be rubbing off on him. He hardened his heart to consider the matter with dispassion. What these random strikes meant was that Lucifer was willing to kill his own to find Dewer.
The dark entity must be close, Farfur, he mind-spoke. These demons have probably been gathered to guard it.
Darkness-that-consumes is that way. Farfur pointed with his snout, his nostrils flaring.
“LEAVE,” a whisper spread through the demon throng. “NOT YOUR FIGHT.”
Dewer swung around, searching, but no winged dark angel stormed toward him. Not that it would have mattered. Having heard of his father’s role in this fight had cemented Dewer’s determination to see this job through. There was a small matter of restitution still outstanding for his father’s murder. Besides which, while he may not survive to make his father proud by enacting a proper Wyhcan marriage ceremony, he would derive a certain amount of perverse pleasure in ensuring the water god won this fight.
A flare scorched three demons at once. Their cries sank into the thick sulfur-laden air.
The trickle of water in the distance turned into a deluge as the waterway came into view. A river flowed like a twisting serpent, with its tail rattling at the far end in the form of a white waterfall. Cool mist peppered Dewer’s hot face making him want to race in and dive under.
“ARE YOU PARCHED?” that insidious whisper slithered through the throng of demons. “WHY NOT QUENCH YOUR THIRST.”
He swallowed painfully past a dry throat. The offer was more tempting than he wished to acknowledge. The surrounding panting monsters kept their distance from that river. Was this a trick then? Or real, but deadly?
Just in case, he tightened his grip on Farfur whose tongue was lolling as if he, too, were desperate for a drink. Farfur did not resist his hold. Wise hound.
“I AM YOUR GOD.” The order boomed, as if Lucifer had lost patience with subterfuge. “BOW BEFORE ME!”
The monsters instantly dropped to the ground in supplication.
Dewer was more encouraged than cowed by that show of temper. If Lucifer was threatening him directly, he must be close. The dark entity must be near here, too. His excitement rose and he reviewed the steps to a spell he planned to cast to force Lucifer to put an end his own dark creation or risk losing all of his monsters.
As for Lucifer’s latest demand, if Dewer were to bow before any deity, it would not be to a bully who could not handle a rebuff. He paused as that thought formed troubling connections. He, too, had acted the bully after Merryn rejected him. While witches had accepted the Creator’s ruling that subverting human free will was out of bounds, Dewer, along with every other warlock, had resented the constraint and been searching for ways to circumvent the decree. How were their responses any different from Lucifer’s petulance?
Except, Dewer was no longer that man, that warlock. He now accepted Merryn’s refusal as her right to make that decision. He had also sworn to himself that he would never again attempt to use Wyhcan mind magic on a human. Not even if the water god lived up to his promise to show him how. Sometimes, No, must be accepted as, No!
“Psst.” The sound came from ahead. Closer to the waterfall.
Dewer’s hold on Farfur slipped and he was back in the empty landscape. He quickly touched the hound’s neck fur, wondering if that call had come from Lleland. The water god had gone ominously quiet again.
The next “psst” was followed by a, “This way.”
About to ask where, he caught a glimpse of light flickering ahead before it died.
“Bother!” the voice muttered in abject frustration from that location.
“Who’s there?” Dewer asked moving toward that light.
“Mr. Dewer,” the cloaked newcomer said. “Tis I, Alfred.”
“Death?” This was the creature Grace had spoken to in the water god’s chamber in Wales.
The figure bowed, revealing part of its skeletal structure. “His envoy, sir.”
“If you are here for me, you are a little premature.”
“Is the water god with you?”
“Why do you ask?” Dewer asked.
“I came to see if I could safeguard him on his way home,” Alfred said, and then showed him a rectangular object. It looked like a plain thin sheet of stone. “I did not see his name on my listing of all whom I am to collect this day, but I could have missed it. My tablet has been acting erratically.”
Squinting, Dewer leaned forward to peer at the stone tablet. There was a lightning shaped crack that ran down the center of it, sending smaller cracks all along the main line. Lights flickered across the tablet, showing a list of names scrolling. Then the light died and the tablet returned to pretending to be naught but a piece of flat stone. Fascinating.
“Why do you care about the water god?” Dewer asked, straightening to gaze at the skeletal figure robed in black. Could the Creator have sent Alfred? Was all of this part of a grand plan? If so, Dewer would definitely consider the Creator worthy of devotion. Especially since he had also gifted him Farfur as his familiar. That generosity deserved a heartfelt, Thank you!
“His daughter would not like her father to be hurt,” Alfred said.
So what?
Dewer did not wish to be hurt either father or daughter. Then he understood. Alfred was not here at the Creator’s bequest. He was here, willing to go against his master’s orders, because Alfred was concerned about a lady’s feelings. The same reason Dewer had wanted to please Grace by saving Adramelech’s hornets, which he detested. There was only one reason a man would be willingly to perform foolish courageous acts. Alfred was romantically infatuated with the water god’s daughter, Llyn!
Dewer could not contain his glee at the vision of this insecure creature and the flirtatious tentacled goddess in a feverish clinch. Served Lleland right. Always posturing about what a great father he was.
Since Dewer was very much his mother’s child, his mind then went directly to how he could use this situation to his purpose. “You could help Lleland stay safe by assisting me. Will you?”
“I wish to please Mistress Llyn.”
Knew it! Dewer showed him his staff. “My mother and the water god are in here. She is recovering from a wound but he came along to ensure we defeat the dark entity.”
“That is a worthy plan,” Alfred said, “for if left unattended, that all-consuming monster is set to cause much harm in the upper world. How will you attack it from here?”
“Grace will soon be sending it scurrying back this way. My role is to keep it from ever returning to the upper world.”
“You have a plan, sir?” Alfred asked, sounding skeptical about Dewer’s likely success in this endeavor. He wasn’t alone on that front. There were a lot of ifs associated with his current plan that could easily derail it.
“One is developing.” He had been considering the ramification on the way here. “A trick Merryn once used against my mother’s pythos.”
Alfred nodded in understanding. “Making the snake men feed off each other.”
“Exactly the one.”
“Then what?” Alfred asked.
“Then Lucifer will have to deal with the decimation of his demons by the dark entity. He would be forced to destroy the very thing he created in order to save his other minions. Else, he risks having few creatures left to do his bidding. I only have one problem yet to resolve.”
“What is that, sir?”
“When it comes time to leave, Lucifer would have ensured I could not use any of my mother’s exits, and the one Adramelech built is now sealed shut. So, I will need an alternate escape route. Can you help with that?”
“When I became Death’s Envoy, I was instructed about our non-interference policy,” Alfred tapped his tablet thoughtfully. Then he tucked it into his robe.
“Is that a, Yes, I will help?” Dewer asked, hope rising.
“Do you think Mistress Llyn would approve if I did?”
Dewer carefully considered his response. His mother would have instantly said, Yes. Anything to get what she wanted. He took another tack, finding he was done with using his friends for his own gain.
“I do not know,” he said, the truth rolling awkwardly off his tongue like oversized marbles. “I am terrible at guessing how a woman might respond to any given situation.” Especially Grace.
“I, too, am ill-equipped at gauging a woman’s likely response.” Alfred nodded, seeming in complete sympathy. “Trouble is, I cannot carry a living being to the upper world.”
A disappointing answer but one he must accept. He held tight to Grace’s belief that he would somehow be shown the way back to her.
GRACE’S HEART WAS RIDDLED with fear as she made her way on Ifan to the meeting place. Her mother was waiting for her by the Thames, arms open for a hug. She dismounted and ran into her embrace.
“Grace, thank heavens you are safe,” the baroness said.
Just then Merryn and Braden flew into the clearing as a raven and a wren and landed. They hopped behind a bush before her cousin transformed herself and her husband back to human form and then dressed them both. Merryn finally approached and said in the same tone she had used on Grace at the Laneast well, “Are you completely mad, Grace?’
Refraining from teasing Merryn on her continued inability to transform with clothing intact, Grace whistled the whoop-whoop-whoop call and held out her arm.
In no time, Jonas landed there. She pulled a strawberry from the air and fed it to the bird. As soon as he had pecked it bare, the remaining slender red ring around his throat vanished. Ignoring her cousin’s chatter, she said to the bird, “Picture who you once were. Do you remember the image I showed you?”
The bird cleaned his beak on her bare arm and cocked his head. Then he flew up and began to shimmer. He grew taller and wider and in a whirl of colors, Jonas stood before them. Not the boy Grace had depicted from her memory, but a full-grown man wearing clothing remarkably similar to what Dewer had been wearing. Jonas must have copied that style when he transformed. Dewer would be pleased.
All resemblance to her beloved fae-warlock ended with Jonas’s clothing, however. Her cousin now was tall and blond, just like his sister, except for two red streaks in his hair. Joy swelled her heart as she glanced from Jonas to Merryn, brother to sister.
Merryn stared at the newcomer in silence, then slowly her tears pooled. She tentatively stepped closer. “Jonas?”
He looked a little lost and stared at her with that familiar head tilt. Then he broke out in a big smile and nodded, holding out his arms. Merryn rushed in, hugging him fiercely.
Her own eyes pricking with happy tears, Grace stepped back and found herself within her mother’s arms.
“This is why you accompanied Dewer into the underworld?” her mother whispered from behind her. “Grace, why did you not tell us?”
“I could not risk Merryn or you getting hurt trying to rescue him, Mama.”
“Yet, you risked yourself?” She turned Grace around to face her.
“I had a great deal of help. Dewer, the two hellhounds, Ifan and a water god.”
“I see a horse and a hound, where is the other hound, the warlock and the water god?”
“Dewer stayed behind to deal with the dark entity so it can never again invade our world. Before he can do that, we must chase it home. Mama, we do not have much time.”
“I know. While you were away, Braden did a blessing for the Thames from this bank but shockingly, that did not seem to work. We were unable to break your shield so that barrier might have inadvertently hindered the blessing. Covens all across Britain are also furiously working on a way to eradicate this darkness from our waters, but as yet we have not come up with anything effective. Even the Warlock Council agreed to study the problem. Do you have a plan?”
