The Seven Songs (10 page)

“Rhia!” Full of rage, I spit some sand from my mouth. “Are you trying to kill me?”

Bouncing back to her feet, she ignored me completely and turned toward my mother. “Stop!” she cried with all the force of her lungs. “Don’t do it!”

But Elen paid no attention. With one hand, she pulled her hair back from her face and bent toward the red flower.

Seeing this, Rhia started to dash up the slope of the dune. A terrible scream arrested her—even as it froze the blood in my veins. A dark mass leaped out of the center of the flower, straight into my mother’s face. She staggered backward, clutching her cheeks with both hands.

“No!” I shouted to the sky, the sea, the mist. “No!”

But it was too late. My mother stumbled, rolling down the dune. When she stopped, I saw that her entire face was covered by a writhing shadow. Then, to my horror, the shadow slithered into her mouth and disappeared.

8:
T
HE
L
ANGUAGE OF THE
W
OUND

I rushed to her side. She lay crumpled near the base of the dune. Wet sand smeared her blue robe and one of her cheeks. The sea breeze rose, sending shreds of mist across the beach.

“Mother!”

“She is your mother?” asked Rhia, joining me. “Your real mother?”

“That I am,” Elen answered weakly, as she rolled onto her back. Her blue eyes searched my face. “Are you safe, my son?”

I brushed the sand off her cheek. “Safe?” I cried. “Safe? I am destroyed. Totally destroyed. I didn’t bring you here to have you poisoned!”

She coughed savagely, as if she were trying to expel the shadow. Yet her face only grew more pained, more frightened.

I turned to Rhia. “I wish you had saved her instead of me.”

She pulled at one of the vines woven into her garb. “I’m sorry I didn’t arrive sooner. I’ve been searching all over for you. Finally I came to Caer Neithan, several hours after you had left. When Cairpré told me what you were doing, I followed you as fast as I could.” Sadly, she looked down at Elen. “It must feel horrible. Like swallowing a bad dream.”

“I—I am all right,” she replied, though her wretched expression told differently. She tried to sit up, then fell back onto the sand.

Bells jangled behind me. A familiar voice moaned, “I feel death in the air.”

I spun around. “Go away, will you? You’re as bad as that poisonous flower!”

His head drooped even lower than usual. “I share your sorrow. I really do. Perhaps I could lighten your burden with one of Bumbelwy the Mirthful’s humorous songs?”

“No!”

“How about a riddle, then? My famous one about the bells?”

“No!”

“All right,” he snapped. “In that case I won’t tell you it was not the flower that poisoned her.” He scowled several times over. “And I certainly won’t tell you it was Rhita Gawr.”

My stomach tightened, even as my mother gasped. I grabbed his wide sleeve and shook him, making his bells rattle. “What makes you say such a thing?”

“The death shadow.
I have heard it described, many times. Too many times for even a fool like me to forget. It’s one of Rhita Gawr’s favorite means of gaining revenge.”

Elen shuddered and groaned painfully. “He speaks the truth, my son. If I hadn’t lost my wits to the spell, I’d have remembered sooner.” Her face contorted, even as the breeze swelled again, as if the ocean itself had heaved a great sigh. “Why me, though? Why me?”

I felt suddenly weak. For I knew in my bones that the death shadow had not been meant for my mother. It had been meant for me. Yet because of me—my own stupidity—it had struck her down instead. I should have listened to Cairpré! I should never have brought her here.

“Rhita Gawr saves this method only for those whose death he truly relishes,” intoned Bumbelwy. “For it is slow, painfully slow. And horrible beyond anything words can describe. The person afflicted suffers one whole month—through four phases of the moon—before finally dying. But the final moments of dying, I have heard, hold more agony, more torment, more excruciating pain, than the entire month before.”

Once again, Elen groaned, drawing her knees into her chest.

“Enough!” I waved my arms at the dour jester. “Stop saying such things! Do you want to kill her sooner? Better not to talk at all—unless you know the cure.”

Bumbelwy turned away, shaking his head. “There is no cure.”

I started to open my satchel of herbs. “Maybe something in here—”

“There is no cure,” he repeated mournfully.

“Oh, but there
must
be,” objected Rhia, kneeling beside my mother and stroking her forehead. “There is a cure for every ailment, no matter how horrible. You just have to know the language of the wound.”

For a flickering instant, Elen’s face brightened. “She is right. There might be a cure.” She studied Rhia for a long moment. Then, her voice weak, she asked, “What is your name, young one? And how do you come to know so much about the art of healing?”

Rhia patted her suit of woven vines. “The trees of the Druma taught me. They are my family.”

“And your name?”

“Most people call me Rhia. Except for the wood elves, who still use my full name, Rhiannon.”

My mother’s face creased in pain—but not, it seemed to me, from her ailing body. It might have been a different kind of pain, felt in another kind of place. Yet she said nothing. She merely turned her face toward the billowing mist beyond the beach.

Rhia moved nearer. “Please tell me your name.”

“Elen.” She glanced my way. “Though I am also called Mother.”

I felt a stab of pain in my heart. She still had no idea that this was all my fault. That I had brought her here against Cairpré’s strongest advice. That I had tried, in my ignorance—no, my arrogance—to act like a wizard.

Rhia continued stroking Elen’s brow. “You feel hot already. I think it will get worse.”

“It will get worse,” declared Bumbelwy. “Everything always gets worse. Far worse.”

Rhia shot me an urgent look. “We must find the cure before it’s too late.”

Bumbelwy began pacing across the sand, swishing his sleeves. “It’s already too late. With this kind of thing, even too early is too late.”

“Maybe there’s a cure that nobody has found yet,” retorted Rhia. “We must try.”

“Try all you want. It won’t help. No, it’s too late. Far too late.”

My mind spun in circles, torn between the urgent hopefulness of Rhia and the gloominess of Bumbelwy. Both could not be true. Yet both seemed plausible. I wanted to believe one, but I feared the other was right. A pair of gulls screeched, swooping overhead to land on a bed of sea stars and mussels. I bit my lip. Even if there were a cure how could we possibly find it in time? Here on this remote beach, with nothing but sand dunes and rolling waves, there was no one to turn to. No one to help.

I straightened suddenly. There
was
someone to turn to! I jumped up and sprinted across the beach to the mist-shrouded peninsula. Ignoring the waves on the slippery rocks, I stumbled several times. Worse yet, in the swirling vapors, I found no sign whatsoever of the pile of driftwood where I had left the wise old shell. Had a powerful wave washed it away? My heart sank. I might never find it again!

Painstakingly, on hands and knees, I combed the wet rocks, turning over slippery jellyfish and examining tide pools. At last, soaked with spray, I spied a shard of driftwood. And there, with it, rested a little shell. Was it the same one? Quickly, I placed the sand-colored cone against my ear.

“Washamballa, is it you?”

No answer came.

“Washamballa,” I pleaded. “Answer me if it’s you! Is there any cure for the death shadow? Any cure at all?”

Finally, I heard a long, watery sigh, like the sound of a wave breaking very slowly. “You have learned,
sploshhh,
a most painful lesson.”

“Yes, yes! But can you help me now? Tell me if there is any cure. My mother is dying.”

“Do you still,
splashhh,
have the Galator?”

I grimaced. “No. I . . . gave it away.”

“Can you get it back,
splishhh,
very quickly?”

“No. It’s with Domnu.”

I could feel the shell’s despairing breath in my ear. “Then you are beyond any help.
Splashhh.
For there is a cure. But to find it,
splashhh,
you must travel to the Otherworld.”

“The Otherworld? The land of the spirits? But the only way to go there is to die!” I shook my head, spraying drops of water from my black hair. “I would do even that if it would save her, I really would. But even if I took the Long Journey I’ve heard about, the one that leads to the Otherworld, I could never get back here again with the cure.”

“True. The Long Journey takes the dead,
splashhh,
to the Otherworld, but it does not send them back again to the land of the living.”

A new thought struck me. “Wait! Tuatha—my grandfather—found some way to travel alive to the Otherworld. To consult with the great Dagda, I believe. Could I possibly follow Tuatha’s path?”

“That was the path that finally killed him.
Sploshhh.
Do not forget that. For he was slain by Balor, the ogre who answers only to Rhita Gawr. Even now Balor guards the secret entrance, a place called
splashhh,
the Otherworld Well. And he has sworn to stop any ally of Dagda who tries to pass that way.”

“The Otherworld Well? Is it some sort of stairwell, leading up to the land of the spirits?”

“Whatever it is,” sloshed the voice of the shell, “to find it is your
splashhh
, only hope. For the cure you seek is the Elixir of Dagda, and only Dagda himself can give it to you.”

A cold wave washed over my legs. The salt stung the scrapes from my falls on the rocks. Yet I barely noticed.

“The Elixir of Dagda,”
I said slowly. “Well, ogre or no ogre, I must get it. How do I find this stairway to the Otherworld?”

Once again the shell sighed with the breath of despair. “To find it you must come to hear a strange, enchanted music.
Splashhh.
The music, Merlin, of wizardry.”

“Wizardry?” I nearly dropped the little cone. “I can’t possibly do that.”

“Then you are, indeed, lost. For the only way to find Tuatha’s path is to master,
splashhh,
the Seven Songs of Wizardry.”

“What in the world are they?”

The wind leaned against me, fluttering my tunic, as I waited for the shell’s reply. At last I heard again the small voice in my ear. “Even I, the wisest of the shells, do not know. All I can say is that,
splishhh,
the Seven Songs were inscribed by Tuatha himself on a great tree in Druma Wood.”

“Not . . . Arbassa?”

“Yes.”

“I know that tree! It’s Rhia’s house.” I furrowed my brow, recalling the strange writing that I had found there. “But that writing is impossible! I couldn’t read a word of it.”

“Then you must try again, Merlin. It is your only chance,
splashhh,
to save your mother. Though it is a very small chance indeed.”

I thought of my mother, lying in the shadow of the dune, afflicted with the death shadow, her breath growing shorter and shorter. I had done this to her. Now I must try to undo it, whatever the risks. Even so, I shuddered to recall Cairpré’s description of the qualities of a true wizard. Qualities that I surely lacked. Whatever the Seven Songs might be, I had almost no chance of mastering them—certainly not in the brief time before the death shadow completed its terrible work.

“It’s too much,” I said despondently. “I am no wizard! Even if I somehow succeed at the Seven Songs, how can I possibly find this Otherworld Well, elude Balor, and climb up to the realm of Dagda, all within four phases of the moon?”

“I should never,
sploshhh,
have helped you.”

I thought about the faint new moon that I had glimpsed last night. Only the barest sliver, it had been nearly impossible for my second sight to find. That meant I had until the end of this moon, and not a day beyond, to find the Elixir of Dagda. On the day the moon died, my mother would die as well.

As the moon grew full, my time would be half gone.

As it waned, my time would be almost ended. And when it disappeared at last, so would my hopes.

“I wish you all the luck,
splashhh,
in Fincayra,” said the shell. “You will need it,
splashhh
, and more.”

9:
R
OSEMARY

Since my mother was already too weak to walk, Rhia and I made a rough-hewn stretcher by weaving some vines from the dune between my staff and the branch of a dead hawthorn tree. As we worked, threading the vines from one side to the other, I explained some of what I had learned from the shell, and asked her to lead us through the forest to Arbassa. Yet even as I said the name of the great tree, I felt a strong sense of foreboding at the thought of returning there. I had no idea why.

Rhia, by contrast, didn’t seem concerned or surprised to learn that the writing on Arbassa’s walls held the secrets I would need to find the Otherworld Well. Perhaps because she had seen Arbassa give so many answers to so many questions before, she merely nodded, continuing to tie off the vines. At last, we finished the stretcher and helped my mother slide into place. Laying my hand on her brow, I could tell that she had grown hotter. Yet despite her worsening condition, she did not knowingly complain.

The same could not be said about Bumbelwy. We had barely started walking, with him taking the rear of the stretcher, when he began doing his own imitation of a speaking shell. When at last he realized that his audience did not find this at all amusing, he switched to describing the intricacies of his bell-laden hat, as if it were some sort of royal crown. When that, too, failed, he began complaining that carrying such a heavy load might strain his delicate back, hampering his abilities as a jester. I didn’t respond, although I was tempted to silence both him and his jangling bells by stuffing his hat into his mouth.

Rhia led the way, with the Flowering Harp slung over her leafy shoulder. I took the front of the stretcher, but the weight of my own guilt seemed the heaviest burden of all. Even crossing the dune, passing beside the bell-shaped flower, felt like a strenuous march.