Page 207 of The Daughters of Avalon
Witchwind. Witchwater. Witchfire.
There was no doubt in her mind now that she was aligned toaether,but even so, these werenotaffinities that were common todewines, not lest they be Goddess blessed and ordained, which she most certainly was not. Rhiannon was the one who should receive the gifts of a priestess, and nevertheless, she had never once seen even Rhiannon perform this sort ofmagik.
How was this possible?
Confused by the mystery, Seren shoved the remaining carrot into her mouth and then sat staring into the raging flame.
Truth be told, none of these abilities had ever manifested themselves before Arwyn’s death. Could they somehow be connected to her sister’s passing? Did Arwyn, somehow, convey her abilities to Seren? But nay… Arwyn had nomagik. Barely at all. Much to her sister’s dismay, she wasnevera proper student of the Craft.
So why here, why now?
Twilight passed, and night fell. Night sounds pervaded the air. Once their meal was done, Seren nibbled here and there at her victuals, studying the flames as they slowly cooled from blue to red and gold, casting a burnished light over their immediate surroundings.
For the love of night, so far as she knew, she wasnotadewinepriestess or she would have been groomed for this from birth. To be a Regnant, there were outward signs—the crossed amber-lit eyes, like Rhiannon’s.
But even Rhiannon was not a priestess as yet. Simply because one had the potential did not mean one could ascend. One must study the Craft over a lifetime and eventually entreat the Mother Goddess. Only with the Mother’s blessings could a priestess be ordained. And, even a fully ordained priestess might not necessarily have the power to manipulate the divine.
Witchwind,witchfireandwitchwater,these were all divine elements, and so far as Seren knew, not even their grandmamau had had the power to conjure the extramundane. It was a skill that appeared only once in a thousand years. So why had these new powers manifested themselves to her so suddenly?
“Seren?” Blinking, Seren peered up at Wilhelm to find him watching her intently. His brows lifted. “You must be overtired,” he said. “We should sleep and rise early.”
Seren nodded, but what she really wished for at the instant was to speak to Rhiannon. Unfortunately, she could notmindspeakoutside proximity, and, to make matters worse, though she could feel her sisters—Rosalynde and Elspeth—theaetherwas completely devoid of Rhiannon’s presence.
Wilhelm finished supping and rose, going straight for the blankets, but despite the deepening night, sleep was the furthest thing from Seren’s mind.
Chapter
Twenty-Six
“Here be your victuals.”
The new warden lunged into Rhiannon’s cell, seizing the morning’s plate, still half full, and grousing as he shoved another plate onto her table to replace it.
“Tarry not,” he demanded. “Hands bound or nay, I cannot be leaving plates all night long else ye’ll be sleeping with rats.” Muttering crossly beneath his breath, he turned his back to Rhiannon and rushed back out, though not before casting her a disgruntled glance.
He was new to the job, she knew—here only a week—but already he’d begun to show some pity, and that was the failure of her previous warden.
“She’s vicious,” she’d heard the steward say. “Show no mercy. And if you turn your back on that lady she’ll skewer you with a fork. But if she doesn’t kill you for showing weakness, I will.”
Clearly, Cael d’Lucy was bored with her. He was gone to London now, leaving his cruel-hearted steward to oversee Blackwood’s prison—a tower-full of Welsh insurgents, so far as Rhiannon could determine. If she could, she would free them all, but with the shackles she was wearing—a lovely gift from hermother—she was well and truly helpless. She couldn’t kindle the fire in her brazier, couldn’t summon a spoon. She couldn’t spy on her sisters.
The shackles she wore effectively blockedallmagik—how she didn’t know, but she surmised it must be imbued with some sort of binding spell. Perhaps even the metal itself was inspired. Mercifully, her hands weren’t fettered behind her back, but by now, her wrists were chafed enough from trying to free them that even the simple act of lifting a fork to her mouth pained her immensely.
Alas, no matter how tiny she tried to make her fists, they were well and duly bound. Even so, the shackles were fascinating. For all that it appeared they should be loose enough to slip off, they resisted. It was as though they could anticipate her intentions. So long as she needed freedom to perform perfunctory tasks—comb her hair or shovel food into her mouth—her hands remained loosely bound. On the other hand, the instant she tried to slip free of them, the metal appeared to expand, leaving no room at all, pinching her flesh till it threatened to cut off her blood supply. And nevertheless, she must persist, because she was lost withoutmagik. There was little worse they could have done to her, except murder her sisters. They could have plucked out her eyes and Rhiannon wouldn’t feel so inadequate. Only now she understood what it felt like to be ordinary—no sight, nomagik, no ability at all. Frustrated, she examined the manacles again, holding them up to the light, hoping against hope to figure out how they worked.
As far as she could tell… they must be forged with some type of alloy, though even as shiny as the metal appeared to be, they were far too unyielding to be pure. Most of the fused silver developed a patina, and she knew this because she and her sisters had been tasked with cleaning all the silver in the chapel at Llanthony. The purest pieces dented too easily, and thereforethe majority of the candle holders at Llanthony were fused with another metal entirely. However, because Ersinius liked to have people believe his chapel was pristine, he’d made them clean the silver with a sour paste made ofvin aigre.Whateverthiswas, it wasn’tthat. For even despite that these were ancient—she could tell by the etching—the silver was completely untarnished. And, if you looked closely, there was a small inscription on both wrist pieces, beside the keyholes. The rough edges of the engraving caught the light like small gems. She could scarcely make it out…
Hic est Draco,
Ex undis,
Tenetur in argenteas
A capite ad calcem, tace, et sile
Roughly translated, it meant, “Here be the dragon”—a true dragon? A Pendragon?
The witch Cerridwen was no dragon. Her sigil was the sigil of the House of Avalon, twin golden serpents entwined about the stem of a winged chalice. She was not directly aligned to Uther, only through the marriage of her granddaughter Yissachar. So, then, perhaps this was not a reference to a Pendragon by name, but rather a reference to the sea serpent, in which case, it could be Cerridwen. Many years after she was cast into exile, there were numerous accounts of her resurfacing as a sea dragon.
