The Ways of Winter Read online

The travelers pushed back from the table and left, all except Cadugan whom Gwyn asked to stay behind. It was time to go into more detailed discussions about the situation, and Cadugan would need any information he could get to do his job for Rhys.

  As things settled down, Gwyn leaned over to speak with George.

  “I’m sorry to see you pulled away from Angharad again. I know how newlyweds like their privacy.”

  We should have done it in my world and eloped to Maui, George thought, but he contented himself with saying, “It couldn’t be helped, sir, we understand. There were just too many people, and they needed reassurance.”

  Gwyn looked around the table. “I wanted to take this opportunity to bring us up to date together and to let Cadugan catch up. Idris, Ceridwen, please give us a summary of where we are right now.”

  Idris looked at Ceridwen and she gestured to him to start first, Rhian attentive by her side.

  “We’ve got a working government established, with Edern as chancellor, Lleision as marshal, and Rhodri as an expert on the ways. The biggest concern is defense, with Madog still unaccounted for, and Morial has started recruiting and training. The fae furthest from the boundaries of the territory are most unaffected and are beginning to revive again, a little, now that they see hope and new life.”

  “That’s the good news,” he said. “On the other hand, we have hospitals that barely function, the schools are just… gone, and all the buildings and fields show the despair of centuries clearly upon them. We need basic crafts-masters, as Rhys has been recruiting, and education for such children as remain, and maybe for some adults, too.”

  George asked, “What about the fae with families?”

  “A few have asked about their families elsewhere, which we take as a good sign, but we need a policy about opening the way altogether, not just letting the emigrants in but the residents out, and when. With a caution—what would happen if they all decide to leave, small blame to them?”

  Rhian said, “What about the lutins? Has anyone found them?”

  “Your brother Rhys has taken them as his special responsibility, with the korrigans, but there’s no sign yet other than those I alluded to earlier: horses groomed in the stalls, lost cows restored, and so forth. The old tasks.”

  Ifor told Cadugan, “One other piece of good news—the crops did well at Edgewood and no one will suffer for a hard winter, if we can reach everyone. And we’ve sufficient here to support the visitors as well as ourselves, if we must.”

  Ceridwen filled in her part. “As Idris says, the schools have vanished, and most of the healers, too. I’m coming along on this next trip to re-establish everything again, and Eluned will be my delegate after I return.”

  Gwyn asked George. “Can you explain for Cadugan where we are with the ways at Edgewood?” He turned to Cadugan to elaborate, “My great-grandson has demonstrated some interesting way-adept capabilities since his arrival, but there hasn’t been enough time to train him properly.”

  George leaned forward. “The Edgewood Way seems to be operating normally since Rhodri opened it and remade the way tokens. On my two visits he and I rode as much of the estate as we could reach in a short time looking for any other ways, especially the other end of the way that reaches to Daear Llosg, the Archer’s Way, I think they’re calling it now. That’s still open but sealed at our end, and we assumed the other end would be open as well, since Madog didn’t get to use it as an escape when he fled after the great hunt. We hope that it communicates with Edgewood.

  “You may not have heard that we did find one small way not far from the house, one that hadn’t been there when Edgewood was built. Rhodri and I decided to shut it down for greater security, Rhys and Edern concurring, and I collapsed it, like Madog’s Hidden Way outside our palisade after the great hunt. We haven’t found any other ways.” Not yet anyway, he thought.

  He caught Cadugan’s skeptical glance. It wasn’t supposed to be possible to completely eliminate a way.

  “I felt a hint of something down at the southern end on my last visit, but we didn’t get that far on horseback and I can’t say for sure whether or not it’s the end of the Archer’s Way at the river meadow. I’d like to know; another access direct from here would be useful, even if it’s some distance overland at the Edgewood end.”

  He sat back in his chair and summarized for Cadugan’s benefit. “That’s my highest priority task, on my next visit, to track down what I thought I felt at the south end of the estate. It’s at least fifteen miles from Edgewood’s manor, though, so it may have to wait until there’s less snow on the ground.”

  Ceridwen broke in. “You haven’t heard. Rhodri sent word yesterday that the way you destroyed has been replaced recently, however impossible that may seem. He says it’s definitely a different way, a bit larger and not in exactly the same place. It’s owned so he can’t claim it. They have it under guard.”

  “Is it Madog?” George said, surprised. “Can he just make ways at will? I thought that couldn’t be done.”

  “It does seem that our knowledge is… insufficient,” Gwyn said.

  George said, “I still don’t understand why no one ever left overland to report on the doings at Edgewood.”

  Ceridwen said, “The fae who live closest to the barrier, whatever it is, are also the furthest from the manor, and Rhys has had his hands full, pulled in many directions. They just haven’t investigated very far into it, yet.”

  Idris said to Cadugan, “Rhys and Lleision have been concentrating on defense, and this new way is a direct threat. I’ve been getting reports daily from Edern’s couriers, what George here has been calling the Pony Express.”

  He turned to face Gwyn, “Do you have today’s reports, my lord? In the confusion of the travelers’ arrival, I haven’t seen them yet.”

  Gwyn said quietly. “The messenger hasn’t come.”

  Into the shocked silence, Rhian said, tentatively, “Maybe he’s been delayed by the snow?”

  Gwyn shook his head doubtfully.

  A knock sounded on the door, and one of Idris’s men stuck his head in. “It’s snowing again, my lord.”

  Gwyn pushed back from the table. “It’s getting on and you have tasks to occupy you. I’ll see you all at dinner.”

  Dismissed, Cadugan and Gwyn’s council members took their leave, Cadugan going over details with Ifor and Ceridwen as they clustered near the door.

  George held Ifor back for a moment. “If there’s any problem housing Cydifor or Maëlys, assign them to me. They’re each traveling alone and are probably feeling a bit lost, and I told Maëlys I’d watch out for her.”

  He let Ifor go then but lingered on to speak with Gwyn.

  “As long as I’m here anyway, sir, I should go with them,” waving at the travelers in the great hall outside, “and see if I can help Rhodri with this new way.”

  “I was going to recommend that,” Gwyn said.

  “I have a question that’s been bothering me about the ways, though. Perhaps you know the answer? I still don’t understand what’s normal, what to expect. I haven’t been through very many of them yet.”

  “Yes?”

  “What I wanted to know was, why do most of the ways have a passage, a little distance to traverse between one end and the other?”

  “They all do,” Gwyn said, puzzled.

  “Well, no, they don’t, not all of them. The one that you opened at the bridge for Nos Galan Gaeaf, for the great hunt, and the ones that Cernunnos opened during the hunt itself—those were all immediate, without passages.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Those are exceptions.”

  “The one that brought me here, what Rhodri now calls the Huntsman’s Way, has no passage, either.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Gwyn said slowly. “Perhaps Cernunnos has his own methods and the few scholars who write about the ways haven’t attended the great hunt and seen them. It seems there’s a lot we’ve been taking for granted about how the ways work.”

  He looke
d hard at George. “Given your presumed relationship, did Cernunnos open the Huntsman’s Way, or did you?”

  George said, “I have no idea how to open a way. I didn’t know they existed, before I came here.”

  But since then you’ve destroyed two, enlarged one, and sealed one, he thought to himself. It’s no surprise that Gwyn asks the question.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Alun?” George called as he opened the front door to the huntsman’s house, along the lane nearest the kennels in the extensive grounds behind the manor. His dogs padded in behind him. There was no reply. Alun wouldn’t have expected him back today and must be out on his own business.

  I have just this evening to myself, he thought, before this batch goes off to Rhys and me with them. Unless it snows again.

  He hung his outer coat near the back door and considered. If it snows, I’ll get that Christmas tree I’ve been promising myself. That’ll be a short jaunt into the woods nearby and I know just the little balsam fir to take, big enough for the central hall in this house, by the staircase.

  He’d taken some ribbing when he first raised the topic. Most of his family and friends here had never heard of Christmas trees, and he had had to explain the custom as part of the winter solstice traditions of his human family—they could understand that. His recent marriage had made him think about how to pass along traditions to his own children, should there be any, and this was one he intended to keep. There were few Christians in the otherworld, just a handful of the humans. He didn’t know where he stood on the subject of religion himself, but he was sure about the importance of family traditions and he meant to celebrate the season in his own way.

  He lit a lamp to help dispel the winter afternoon gloom and took it with him as he walked up the stairs. A glint on glass caught his eye and he was cheered to see that Alun had started to hang some of his family photos along the hall, here upstairs where the phenomenon of photography would be less startling to his fae visitors. He lit the hanging wall lamps so that he could stand back and look at them.

  On that first visit home a month ago, after his decision to stay, he’d had to decide what to bring with him from his human life, thirty-three years of accumulation. He’d settled on some clothes, a few keepsakes, the boxes holding his parents’ materials (now piled in the library downstairs awaiting a free moment), and these photographs, many of which were recently blown up and framed for the purpose.

  His grandfather had done something extraordinary. George was his only descendant, the son of his daughter, and he must have been seized with sentiment at his marriage and the possibility of great-grandchildren, for he’d taken the lead in arranging the selection and framing of the photos and, most surprisingly, had passed along the painting of the Talbot family arms, done for his own grandfather more than a hundred years before. That gleaming vision, the golden lion standing rampant on the red ground, had presided over George’s meals in his grandparents’ house for his entire childhood, and he still couldn’t believe his grandfather had decided to part with it.

  Here, now, in this fae otherworld, that heraldic lion came to stand for the most prominent human thread in his makeup, and he gave it a position of honor at the top of the landing where it presided over the hall.

  The center of his family display was not, however, the photos, but a painting just hung that Angharad had made after her visit, of his grandparents, now in their late seventies. There were few elderly fae—George had yet to meet one—and she had dwelt perceptively and sympathetically on the changes of age balanced by the accumulation of experience. You could see Gwyn’s features in his daughter’s face, humanized and softened. This painting was very dear to him and he lingered over it now. After his parents’ deaths when he was nine, his grandparents were the only human family he had. He smiled faintly, remembering—Rhian had never seen aged humans before and was frankly shocked when she met them, politely though she tried to hide it. He imagined this painting might disturb others here, too. Let them see what mortality brings, they’ll experience it too if they live long enough.

  He touched the framed photos of his mother. He was older now than she was when he lost her, and her young face from childhood on smiled from every frame. There were no pictures of his father; he hoped to learn more when he went through their papers.

  He’d also brought back books and intended to bring more, but that was a topic which gave him difficulty. It was one thing to leave natural history references lying around, but what about books on technology that was out of place here? Or fiction that painted a story of a world alien to the fae, especially the twentieth century?

  He’d made Alun a gift of Kipling’s Jungle Books so that he could have a copy of his own and return Ceridwen’s to her, but he was reluctant to contaminate this world with too much of his old one, despite Ceridwen’s fondness for old-fashioned country house murder mysteries. On the other hand, who was he to decide what they should or shouldn’t know? Nothing prevented the ones who were interested from traveling into the human world via a way, if they could find one. He intended to have a long discussion with Ceridwen about it, soon.

  He went on to his bedroom to pull out one of his old sweaters suitable for tomorrow’s excursion into the woods for a tree and to put on fresh clothing for dinner this evening.

  He stepped back into the hall when he heard the sound of footsteps, and found Alun climbing the stairs. “I saw the dogs,” he said. “You’re back already?”

  “I had to help Thomas Kethin with a big group of travelers, too many to house at the inn. Now I’ve been drafted to help get them to Rhys and look into the ways there, again.”

  “You should go somewhere they can’t find you,” Alun said sympathetically.

  “That gets my vote,” George said, ruefully. “Oh, we might be housing guests overnight. Two of the travelers are on their own, a musician and a lutine from Iona’s place. If Ifor can’t house them, I volunteered. I don’t know yet what will be arranged, but wanted to warn you.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said. “I was just hanging these.” Alun gestured at the wall. “Very strange, these photographs are.”

  “It looks fine, so far. A wall of pictures like this is very common, where I come from. Be sure to leave room for more from Angharad, as the spirit moves her.”

  “I suppose it’s comforting, having a taste of home around you.”

  “I’m finding it so, though it’s not my home any longer. This is. No regrets.” He smiled, thinking of his wife and wishing she were here.

  “Have you finished your work to cover your absence in the human world?”

  George thought about his arrangements with Mariah Catlett, the human agent Gwyn used to coordinate his human holdings, such as the Bellemore property in Rowanton. As a whipper-in for the Rowanton Hunt, he’d known her only as a quiet middle-aged woman, always in the first field. After he took over as huntsman for Gwyn and decided to stay, he discovered that she’d been an agent for Gwyn for thirty years. She’d inherited the position from her father, who’d stumbled upon Gwyn’s other life, back when he was impersonating a human in order to raise his daughter, George’s grandmother, and see her married.

  She knew what Gwyn was, and took George’s revelations in stride, content with this unusual way of making a living. Gwyn paid her well, and the only condition placed upon her, other than discretion, was that she had to live in the caretaker’s house Gwyn had built for her father, at the spot where the Guests’ Way’s hidden branch emerged on the Bellemore property.

  She was widowed with one son, and George wondered if he would be initiated into the family arrangement, or if Gwyn and he would be seeking someone else eventually, but for now it was a stable situation.

  “Mariah and my grandfather have arranged my bank accounts and set up the necessary paperwork to rent my farm and sell the things I won’t be keeping, and to keep my human identity alive. They’re telling my friends that I’ve sold my position in my company and am taking the opportunity to trave
l, a complete change of life.” That’s not so far wrong, he thought.

  “Has it been hard, giving up the business that you built?”

  “Surprisingly not. I feel like I’ve squeezed that life dry, and suddenly software and computers and email, they’re not so important.” He smiled at Alun’s blank look. “I’ll still buy a few things through her, I imagine.” Giving up the Internet was one thing, he thought, but deodorant was another.

  “This will all get more complicated when my grandparents pass on, but I hope that will be many years from now. If I have the long life, I suppose I’ll eventually be a solitary on the human side, like Gwyn.” It was a sobering thought, that he might have centuries yet to see how the human world advanced.

  “Oh, well, “ he summarized, “no gain without some loss. And speaking of concentrating on the here-and-now, if we can’t travel tomorrow, I’m going after that Christmas tree. I’ll need a pick, and ax, and a spade. I want to bring it back as a live tree, not a cut one, so I’ll also need something to bundle around the root ball and not make a mess in the hall. The bottom half of a small barrel, maybe?”

  “How will you get it here?” Alun asked.

  “Good question. I wonder if anyone around here knows what a toboggan is?”

  The great hall was almost full, all of the tables set up for the unexpected visitors, amid a general air of jollity as everyone enjoyed a break in routine.

  Ifor caught George as he walked in and asked if he were still willing to house Cydifor and Maëlys for the night. “It’s been that difficult to get them all sorted out. Those two didn’t say anything, but I could see they weren’t comfortable just tagging along with the others.”

  “No problem at all,” George said. “Alun’s making the two rooms available, and I’ve planned to have a few friends over. Can you tell them to come to me at the end of dinner, and I’ll bring them along?” Ifor nodded, and George went on to find Brynach, seated with his great-uncle Eurig in the position of an honored vassal at the front of the main hall.