They Who Chase the Thief

The thief could not recall how long they had chased him. Pale phantasms stalked his every step, clawing and relentless. Weariness was unknown to them, a failing of mortal men, faults in the flesh and the mind. Inured to qualms and weakness, they pressed on implacable in their grim venery.

Countless times he allowed himself to think that he had lost them on the path, and every time they had closed the distance and bore down upon him. Not long after he had fled the arbour, flitting over the angry waves of a great black sea, he had first felt their presence, spurred onward by an indomitable force. A powerful will had extended itself through the vast oceans of space, urging his tireless lieutenants onward. Their lord, he realised. The fear of being hunted eclipsed by the dread he bore for the master of the hunters… I am a fool. I stole from him. He knows. He knows!

The flasket at his hip had rattled intolerably. The noise had proved too unbearable, so he had untied the soft leather strap from his belt to hold it instead. If I drop it, my journey would be for nought. His grip tightened on the horn.

Petulant ideas gnawed away at his mind like a doddering old man, arguing that it would be safer if he lost it. If they find you… and you don’t have it… they will curse and bluster, spit on you even, but they will turn their noses elsewhere! Why should they punish he who doesn’t have their prize? It was a desperate plea, something that belonged in the mind of a madman, a raving moon-howler, not him. His mind was sound, long ago resolving to gain the exaltation that he knew he deserved, to raise himself higher than the lot fate had doled him. He had seen the Blessed’s Cauldron, danced with the bold Alder and old Willow and blushing Rowan, played a game of tafl with a king, and had journeyed to the Fief of Annwn, that strange, lovely place, and lived to tell the tale. He could not give up now, not after going so far and risking so much.

The knowledge necessary to step into Annwn was a secret that scant few possessed. A woods-sorcerer had been his teacher, a single drop of his blood having been the payment for that lesson. It was a trifle thing to part with one red bead, after all, he would soon be renowned as the one who bested the Lord of the Annwn. His name would be writ large in the annals of a perennial dynasty, at the head of a grand golden kingdom.

My hall will sit a hundred score revellers, large enough for the nobility of the realm in its entirety and still room enough for a horse race. The stables shall be greater than the largest castle, housing the finest horseflesh. Even the lowliest servant and scullion shall scoff himself on meat like a lord.

He could see the artisans capturing his likeness in the form of silken tapestries and bronze busts. His face was always high and scornful, and the horn was always in his hand. The great trophy.

His thoughts wandered further, day turned to night and to day again. He was nowhere and everywhere, time crawling past in an unctuous silence, the light blending like ink in water. In his mind’s eye, he saw puissant champions fighting to preserve his honour. From a lofty throne, the scions of the old blood prostrated themselves and paraded their young maiden daughters before him. Why stop at one? The great and small, his subjects all, paying homage to the great trickster. Pale-skinned beauties stole glances at him shy-eyed and pink-cheeked, while guardians stood vigilant like living statues clad in gilded steel. More and more his mind was pulled away from the twisty path he tread. The light around him warped to a steely grey. The ground was lit by some wan veiled light, traced her and there by pillions of white like the veins in polished marble. The sky was stolid and shimmering, falling towards him in a black pall, swirling and reflecting silver light. A face stared back at him in the murk. Then the water leapt up and yanked him under.

It was cold. Darkness hissed in his ears, the gentlest of fingers caressed his face, and he could not breathe. The thief gasped for air, thrusting cold water down his throat. Green and grey and black, the woolly head of the woods-sorcerer took form before him, his hair moving in clods like blades of rotting sea-grass, a rictus smile stretching his mouth. “Distractions have no place in magic-craft”, he spat through a set of brown teeth. He had been in the alehouse at Fort Emrys when he had said that, when he was a man, not a talking head in water. Surely only the dead haunt the living? He lives, he cannot torment me... It seemed like some cruel jape. He had done everything that the old man had said.

“NO! You let your wanton lust for glory muddle your mind! This is not some gaudy plaything you can use and discard on a whim. It is old, toilsome, dangerous. . . and woe befalls those fools and neophytes that attempt to wield that awful power.”

When he left had him in that shadowed, crooked alley, the old man had reeked of vomit, sprawled happily drunk in a puddle of muck. The head must have sensed what he was thinking, for his spiteful smile withered. His mouth grew agape, extending to hideous proportions. His eyes were transfixed on the thief, never moving, unblinking and dead. Jawbones shattered, skin peeling away from his face like a rotten fruit, until only two bloody eyes remained in a yellow skull. “I WARNED YOU, BOY!” The words turned into a howling scream.

All he could do was scream back. This can’t be real. It’s not. It can’t be. Where’s the surface? There must be a surface! Air! Breathe... His lungs burned. A hissing in his ear, his thoughts a tumult inside, he kicked and pawed at things in the water, but found nothing. Where’s the horn? I’ve lost the horn. Darkness seeped into his vision, and he struggled no more.

Dreams came and went, fleeting things that were forgotten as soon as they were borne. When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his back, aureate light bathing an orchard in blessed warmth. Where… Something cold trickled through his curly hair, down his cheeks, and onto his lips. It tasted sweet. Like grapes.

Looking up, he saw the face of a young woman silhouetted by the gleaming sun. A smile full of mischief played upon her lips, giving slight dimples to her cheeks. Her eyes were the lightest grey, the coldest blue. Suspicion feebly kneaded his thoughts. He knelt on an elbow and turned to face her.

She was young, a willowy frame clad in golden cloth, shining in the splendour of day. She had a pug nose in a narrow face framed by flaxen hair that fell in loose ringlets down her shoulders and around her chest. A delicate hand grasped an ornate drinking horn, banded in silver and incised with queer markings. When she lifted it to drink, her eyes smiled too. I know those eyes. “Who are you? I know...” A finger tenderly touched his lips, silencing him. That face, that hair. It was as though he had been lost, gone for so long that this face he ought to have recognised now belonged to a stranger. He knew her from a balmy day, from a dream dreamt long ago, from a lifetime past. At the back of his mind a memory eddied and surfaced, but it was clouded and opaque, like a pane of cheap glass. Her name escaped him. When he tried to talk, she shifted herself onto his lap. The cloth-of-gold gown clung tightly around her hips and chest. That must be very uncomfortable...

She said something. He looked into her eyes, only to see a blank face smiling playfully at him. A dark cast passed over her gaze it seemed to him, and suddenly those eyes looked like a thunderhead threatening to spit lightening. A throaty laugh escaped her full lips then, taking a deep draught from the horn. The horn. His hands wandered, one going to her back as the other stroked her chin. She hid it with the horn teasingly. Give it to me. Her free hand went to his chest, pressing down with an overpowering force, pushing him back down on the warm grass. She’s strong, at least. The wine had made her lips a deep red.

The girl leant over him, and curls fell around him in a sweet-smelling screen. He raised his head high enough to meet her eager lips, finding them open and groping. Even her tongue tastes sweet. Then it was the horn she pressed to him, urging him to drink. The liquor within tasted of foreign things he could not name, spices from some fantastical land. Sweetness, a wine like no other, tastes like the warmth of summer days in youth and the kiss of a flaxen-haired girl. He struggled to rip his gaze from her, to look down at the horn. The contents sloshed around, a dark red-purple. She brushed a little finger across his open lips. Breathe! His eyes shot open. When he tried to get up, she pushed him back down. His arms flailed as they clawed at empty air. Panic and desperation made him intake a breath, only for him to choke on wine. The girl slid long fingers through his hair, her face contorted in ecstasy. She gave a shudder, dropping the horn into his lap as her hand went to his breeches.

*

“See, I told you!” A voice like a thunderclap boomed out. “Must still ‘ave a bit of water left in ‘im!” Golden light dissolved, diffusing into an all too familiar grey. The girl was gone, her lusting mouth and icy eyes replaced by the black silhouettes of mountain slopes, each sharp summit a fang pointing up into a baleful sky. The thief was wet, and cold. Water came back up, and a taste of metal filled his mouth. To his side was the ugliest barrel of a man, drenched and dripping. Squat and square, hairless but for a wispy chin beard that came down to his waist. His nose was a bulbous protuberance above a mouth big and stupid and smiling. Behind him a tall thin woman stood straight, with hair streaked in equal parts pearl and ebony. She might have been pretty of a day, and the thief might have considered tumbling her, but work and age had hardened her hands and lined her face. Her mouth was a thin bitter line. “Eurig, he breathes, don’t you see?. Anymore thumping and you’re like to shatter his ribs!”

The man Eurig toyed with his beard. “I knows, wife. Just wanted to see if he ‘ad any of the lake left in ‘im. Steady now good man!” Trying to rise proved to be a mistake. The thief realised how weak his drowning had made him, and attempting to talk produced a wheeze. His throat burned. A hoarse plea for “Water…” was all he managed, before he fell into a coughing fit. The man called Eurig chuckled and slapped his round belly. “You sure ‘bout that? Nearly drunk the whole lake, you did! Good folks needs that water to fish, you knows!” With quick strides, the woman moved forward and gave the ugly man a hard backhanded slap over his bald shining head. “Husband? Fool, more like! Give him a drink of water! No, not mine, from your own skin!”

They were fisherfolk, and the humblest of that sort. As honest as they were poor, it seemed to the thief. Eurig the husband was curious why he had been in the water. The thief replied with an easy smile. “I had always put off learning to swim, and now seemed as good a time as ever to learn.” It had been a hard first lesson.

When the coughing finally stopped and he could walk unaided, the affable husband and the prigged wife both agreed that it was paramount the man from the lake dry off and fill his belly. The allure of dry clothes and a warm meal proved too hard to refuse. The waterside shingle gave way to hardscrabble grasses and gnarled blackthorn that blew forlorn in the stiff autumn breeze. They skirted the lakeside and then up onto a moraine hill to their hovel. A young sheltered valley lay before them, at its head a rudely placed square structure of stone, with a sloping thatch roof. Beside it was a small vegetable garden and pig sty. The pigs were apparently shy, or in the larder. Inside, the hovel was a cramp spot all said, made smaller when the thief had been bundled with rough-spun woollen blankets by the hearth. But it was warm, made homely by some carp smoking and spitting over an ample hearth.

Eurig the fisherman had inherited his meagre kingdom from his father, who had it from his father, and him from his father, and he who inherited it from a grand-uncle, and on and on, he was more than happy to boast. His wife was named Eos, whom Eurig had paid the goodly price of a dozen ewes from a cousin. Despite the fact that the husband looked every inch a brute and champion pit fighter, he had a mild manner and a healthy fear of his wife. They were simple and hard-working, and the thief found himself asking questions, with Eurig answering each pleasantly with his lout’s smile. “You is in the Giant’s Throne,” he told him. “T’is the highest of the mountains in this ‘undred.” If the verbose fisherman could be believed, the mountain range had been shaped by the colossi of legend, using blocks of monstrous size to construct a chair fit for their tall monarch.

Indeed, the massif did look like a throne, with large basalt cliffs and tuffs acting as a backrest and cushioned by scree slopes, flanked on either side by two sweeping arms of lesser peaks for the king of the giants to rest his oversized arms. In place of a seat lay the ice-cold waters of the lake. Eurig claimed that it was the home of the fair folk, fay creatures from another realm that played tricks on men and stole beautiful maids... and who could only be seen at midnight. The thief countered that the lake was most likely where the giant had pissed himself while struggling to rise from his chair, to which Eurig found hilarious. His wife tightened her mouth in distaste.

Long hours passed. There were no windows in that hut of stone and daub, but their door had slits between hard-hacked planks, allowing light the colour of dirty linen to slash into the home and paint what little they owned in light swimming with dust motes. With dusk came a chill and muggy vapours. The husband fed wood to the fire and the wife tended to the carp, stopping only to light a long, tapered candle. The thief thought he saw the shadow of a smile dance upon her lips in the ruddy glow. When the fish was ready, they shared the day’s catch with the thief. They had six that he saw, and two were given over to him. Oily and smoky it was, the wife had poured a rich sauce of garlic and mushrooms and some sweet herbs over the steaming fish which set the thief’s mouth to water. The tender flesh fell apart in his mouth, and juice ran down his chin. When nothing remained but spindly fish-bones, the man conjured up a demijohn from a hidden place, filling three wooden mugs with a strong-smelling liquor the colour of amber. It stung the thief’s eyes and set him to coughing all over again to the amusement of Eurig, with even Eos giving a chuckle. The more he drank, the more the thief found that he liked it. When his mug was empty, it was filled again. Eurig’s wife drank to match Eurig himself, who then began to sing and tell stories of her own. The thief noticed how strong her voice was, and how confident she told a lay of some old lord or regaled them with stale adventures. She could have been beautiful. The drink didn’t seem to burn as much then.

His hosts had plentiful stories to share, and they told each with a vigour that belied how mean their peasant lives were. The thief had given away little of himself. I haven’t even told them my name… They were generous though, and that made him cautious. He painted a smile on his face as they drank and japed.

They probably expect something in return for their hearth. No, not just their fire ... but their food, their liquor, and their company and stories and songs too. They may have seen the horn... the horn!

His head swam, and he realised that he had drunk too much. The carp had been warm and wholesome, but it had not filled his belly as he would have liked. He excused himself and went outside.

The air was still, and the world hid behind a wall. He could not see six feet ahead of him, the sparse grass tufts shying away into a milky haze. Hours before, he had seen directly down into the Throne, before a damp miasma had choked this valley. He watched his piss vanish before him.

Light leeched through the gloom from someplace. A bilious gleam, a yellow so pale it was not a light in truth, but a mimicry, a gloom from some dirty flame. How late is it? Surely the sun has sunk below the Throne. The glow lingered long after he had laced himself up, and feel his hands go cold.

If he strained his hearing, he could almost make out a low muttering, distant soughing some ways off. If he looked long enough, he could see the four-legged shape prowling through the void.

“What is it? Can you hear them?” A woman’s voice asked, his daze broken. He spun, his hand going to the dagger on his hip and finding it gone, lost when he fled the other place. It was just the wife. Eos. Her name is Eos. She stood near the hovel, a shawl about her shoulders, the pallid light giving her face a sickly hue. “Who are they? The voices... and I thought I saw a wolf.”

She looked away, the gaze fixed on the wall enveloping them. “It was a wolf, most like. Fierce beasts, made lean by these short, dark days. But beautiful too, in a wild way. They smell the food, is all. They will not harm us. The voices though, they are...” She placed a small hand to the hovel’s wall. “My sister could hear them too. Not my true sister, mind you, but we grew up together, and she was more like a sister to me than those of my own blood. We shared everything. She had a dark face, and her eyes were darker still, more black than brown, and her hair… I used to wish that I looked like her. The folk used to whisper that she was of them that live below and away, the fair ones that come and bless us. Maybe she was.” The way she looked at him then, her face full of age, of pain, of something long given to brooding, it tore at his heart. It made him want to console her, or run away.

“Do you believe that she was? One of the fair folk, I mean?” A chill wind snaked low to the ground to cut through his blanket. It caused her shawl to rise and rip at her hair a-tangle, but she didn’t seem to feel it. “No. I don’t know. Perhaps. She was different, in her own way. Where some whispered that she was the fruit of a union between man and fay, others said that she was the get of a raping twixt father and daughter, and sure to be weak-bodied and feebleminded. Through all the calumnies, she grew from a coltish, wilful child into a well-formed and bold woman, high-spirited and shapely, yet also kindly and comforting. As she grew, she saw how men looked at her with lust, and fear. She was vain, my sister, and proud. Pride is something we folk of mountain and vale cannot have in this ignoble life. We keep few possessions as you’ve seen, and only them we keep if useful… Pride is not. Pride brings pain.” The thief thought that strange, as though she were picking at an old puckered scar. He wanted to know what she meant, forming the question in his mind, but then she said, “She is long dead now. Went south, good few years back. Down there, to one o’ them big ports by the sea. She was so beautiful, my sister. I refused to believe it when I heard that... How they’d...” Her mouth was slightly open, he saw. Even with a hand to steady herself, she swayed drunkenly. She shouldn’t be telling me any of this. It’s the drink. “Good wife, we should go back inside. I’ve been half-frozen already from my paddle in the tarn, and I’d like my blood to remain warm and flowing.”

That seemed to shake her from reverie, if not make her slightly lucid. “Oh? Yes, for certain. We should retire. It has been a long day. The husband dropped his head soon after you went without. You’ll be sleeping by the hearth, but you won’t be wanting for blankets.” The air inside was stuffy and tinged with smoke when he opened the hard-hacked door, yet the warmth embraced him like a lover, and for that the thief was glad. I never want to be cold again. He returned to his spot by the hearth, and the wife seated herself on a ramshackle stool to stoke the dying fire. The man Eurig was dead to the world, sprawled rat-arsed on a pallet. For a time, the only sound was the soft crackle of burning wood and the snoring man. It seemed to the thief that Eos had sobered a mite, from the way she held herself, and how her face had taken on the same hard look he had seen earlier by the lakeside, with water in his lungs.

A feeling took hold of him then, a need to confide perhaps, or maybe the drink was still there, but he found himself telling her of his voyages. From meeting the woods-sorcerer, and the sharing of secrets. To his fleet sojourn to the other place. He described as best he could his hasty departure with the horn, and the flight from the hunters, and the adamant will he felt spur them on. He told her everything, leaving out only the girl that he half-remembered in the garden. She said not a word. Her eyes though… He wasn’t even certain who she was. The memory was a locked door, and he had lost the key.

When he was done, disquiet settled in the hovel. The hearth-fire sent sylphs to caper across the rough daub walls. She turned away. Was it puzzlement, or mistrust, he saw etched in those hard lines? She had listened, every word received in attentive silence, never stopping to question each outlandish claim. Hugging the shawl to herself, he let the tale wash over her. From time to time an errant wind had slammed against the door, but it was just that, the wind. The night and all the perils therein remained blessedly outside. Herein, he sat by the hallowed hearth, the heart’s haven, the safest place in all the world.

But I lost the horn . . . I am hunted. How safe can I truly be?

Then at once, Eos rose with skirts swirling, promising that they would search for the horn on the morrow, and bid him a good night. The thief had no words to that. He gathered his blankets and stretched out by the fire. I am safe.

Morning came, tearing him from the half-light of dreams. The self-same fog secreted the valley outside. Sallow light penetrated the gloom still, giving the day a noisome quality and doing nought to improve visibility. Eurig was the first to rise, and upon being told by his wife what they planned to do, he went about readying the provisions for the day with vacuous smiles. Their small party headed down a well-used rutted path down to the lakeside. Did we come this way before? The thief would have been hopelessly lost had he not had the fisher-folk to lead him.

Dampness in the air soon covered his borrowed woollens in a fine layer of dew, and soon threatened to dampen his own clothes beneath. His mood was black, his doubts about the husband and wife making his stomach roll. He kept his misgivings to himself. He needed the horn, and he doubted that he could learn to swim before they caught his scent.

A narrow shingle beach clung to the far end of the lake like a pebbly crescent moon, as the oaf atypically put it. From the lakeside all the thief could see was a redoubtable black mirror that gradually merged with the wasting fog. Zephyrs danced upon its still surface, in their cavorting sending wisps of fog into little gyres and corkscrews. Arriving, he could see that it was not a beach in truth, but a stony, tapering strand shouldered by sheep-back rocks, and littered by driftwood and goat shit.

The man Eurig toyed with his beard, lost in his own thoughts. The thief hid a disgusted look as the clod coiled his greasy braid through dirty fingers. He had hauled a coracle on his strong shoulders: a small, round, one-man boat, made from willow and coated with tarred hide. He had owned another, but that had been used to save their guest the day before, breaking the hide bottom and sinking it in the process. With a smile, he hooted, “Never ‘ad in me ‘ead to fish for ‘orns, and maybe catching a boat too!” Only if that fucking boat is worth a kingdom. The thief spat into the lake.

“Why’d yous take the horn into the waters, goodman?” Eurig asked, setting his coracle in the shallows. The question took the thief unawares, that such an astute point had been made by this muttonhead. He searched for an excuse, settling for, “I had it tied to my belt, here,” he gestured with a lazy wave.

“Har… came loose, then. I haves the same trouble with the catch, I do. I gets me some good fat fish, then getting when I comes home they’ve vanish! Gone! Coulds me the fair folk makings me for a fool.”

“No doubt.”

The lout soon made good distance through the water. He was lost to sight after ten feet, drawing soft dappling strokes behind him with a pair of short paddles, the only assurance that the idiot hadn’t fallen into the realm of the fair folk. Eos slumped an old knapsack from a slender shoulder to the pebbles. She had changed her shawl for a woollen cloak. “Why did you steal the horn?” Her hair had been tied back, yet stray ashen locks brushed gently across her long face. “It was the first thing I saw,” he lied. “A bauble, one I could carry with ease.” He looked out into the lake, every few moments the water stirring, sending ripples to tenderly kiss the driftwood stringed along the water line.

“You knew its worth.” It was pointed and accusing. “It must be a mighty fine treasure of the Annwn, for them to come a-thundering after you.” He could feel judging eyes digging into his back. She could slit my throat, her words certainly have venom enough to kill me. He met her obdurate gaze. “You would have done the same if you had a thimble of the understanding I have.” Her fool husband knows where my horn is. It would be nothing to them to give me a red smile and put stones in my breeches. The bitch is here to question me while the idiot is claiming my prize. She’s fucking played me. Eos tightened her coat, flinty eyes in a head held aloof. “What is it used for, pray?”

His face must have given away his confusion. Words knotted on his tongue. He felt his face twist into a barbed snarl. “Oh, there are so many. One can drink from it... now and again it can hold water and pour wine and such. Occasionally, you can even blow the horn.” Her face softened, and she dropped to the ground in limp resignation. Tears glistened in her eyes. “It’s magic, is it not? In the stories, magic horns can do all sorts of things. They could bring wisdom, reason, boundless joy, even heal the sick, or summon an army of tall oaken warriors to protect you and your kin.” Sitting there, bundled in her cloak, she looked more a naïve child than a woman worn and wearied. “There was a horn in a story my Da told me when I was little. It was made from the horn of a fiery aurochs, the last of that kind bred by the giants. It did many wondrous things. In one telling, a hero named the Beli the Bard cut the horn from a chain about the neck of the tyrant King Idwal. He used it to find his flowery bride, that is until he was changed into an eagle. They were reunited in the end, so there was a happy ending to the tale. Da would tell the stories so lovely, I would cry every time he...”

You’re father was a fool, like your fucking husband. “It’s a horn!” Anguish filled his voice. “Just a fucking horn! I was seen by something in the Fief, so I fled. I chose the horn on a whim, if you must know. The… the hunters have been on my heels since. I thought that I would be safe on the path. It seems they have a way of finding me, or at least, they know how to find the horn. It is not hard to look at, but it’s hardly a Treasure of the Blessed.” His anger loosened his tongue. “I ventured where none dare dream... and all I have to show for it is a paltry drinking horn and water in my breeches.”

Desperation flushed her face. “The horn may be able to do things one cannot fathom! In the right hands, magic can be made to do most anything--” He made a rude noise. Her face tightened like taut leather. “For someone that claims to know the secrets of magic, you don’t seem very magical. Truly, you can’t be very good at it.”

Heat burned his cheeks. Rage writhed and coiled in his stomach like an angry wyrm. I should kill you for that, bitch. Your husband cannot save you here. He clenched his fists until it hurt. The way she looked at him then, with windblown hair, the straight nose in a long face, and eyes sharp and clear, his breath was ragged and his throat was dry. Youth clung to her like a bad humour. She’s wasted on that churl. He wanted to kiss her. He knelt to the stones.

“Fie! Murder! Help! Help me!” Came the voice over the waters. Something, lost in the fickle haze, splashed quickly in haste. The figure in the piddling boat emerged like some troll from his misty cave. He was hunched, straining to the paddles. Despite his harsh movements, the fisherman swept through the water swiftly, as fast as the craft would allow and glancing about wildly, making the already ungainly coracle threaten to capsize. Near to the shoreline, the thief could make out the square shivering frame and wild searching eyes.

His wife was on her feet, crying in a voice shrill and quivering. “Husband! What is it? Make for the shore! Careful now!” Fear pierced the thief’s belly. A shadow crept over his heart, and he felt the need to make water. Off yon he heard a discordant muttering. No. No. No… Not yet! “Eurig! Good man! Did you manage to find my horn! Where is the...” He realised all too late. The man in the boat shivered, his scalp and cheeks beaded with sweat, but otherwise he was dry.

Then he jumped from the boat with a deafening splash. The coracle drifted away.

“Quick, wife! T’was a hound! Monstrous big hound, it was!” He scrambled to the shingle, soaking and shaking violently. His beard clung comically to his face like a greasy tangle of seaweed as his wife wrapped him in a blanket, trying feebly to calm him down. A hound, monstrous large. The thief stared at the drenched oaf, and would have laughed had the sense of doom not taken hold. He needed to know. “A hound… what colour was the pelt?” Eos looked to him wide-eyed. Eurig jabbered nonsensically, mouthing curses and looking in every direction. Something cold slithered down the thief’s back. “Answer me! What fucking colour?” The oaf made a sign to ward off evil and buried his face in his hands. “Tell me! If you don’t tell me, we die! Damn your eyes!”

“W-W-White, it was!” Eurig screeched, then collapsed into sobbing and blubbering. He sounded more girl than man, a frightened child clinging to a mother’s skirts. “White like b-bones. . . Like snow. With ears as red as blood! They is here!”

Bone and blood. He felt as though he was back in that other place, the long scarlet ears pricked like the points of terrible bloody spears. Courage failed him, his movements drunken and slow. He had a stone in hand, and he spun. The gloom fenced them with the cold milk-white walls, the yellow within seeping through like pus. The more he looked, the more the fog seemed to take the form of malformed men, beasts, dragons, fiends, serpents, misty apparitions, all talking in their hushed voices and regarding him with malice.

“Do you have a knife? Something sharp? Woman!” He yelled to Eos, who cradled her hysterical husband. She looked over a shoulder to the knapsack puddled rudely among the pebbles. “I have… I don’t…” He willed himself to move, dropping the stone in hand and rummaging through her knapsack. He found a piece of cheese, a half-loaf of oatbread, three wrapped sides of carp, a small way-flask of liquor, and a tarnished fish knife. It clinked softly against a large threadbare pouch beneath. Hoping against hope, he pulled the pouch free, letting the foodstuffs clatter noisily to the pebbles. The cloth clung to the outline a long, tapering object within. Eos said something. He felt breath close to his ear. He peeled the fabric from the horn, running a finger over a silver band. Looking inside, he found that it was empty. His hope, like the wine, had dried up and vanished. Then he was walking, slipping here and there on damp stones and doggedly putting distance between the fisherfolk and himself. In his mind he saw the path.

Something tugged at his sleeve. When he looked, Eos had left the husband and was now clutching his arm white-eyed, her face drenched in tears. Her words fell on deaf ears, so she pointed at Eurig, who lay on the shingle with the blanket loosely covering him. He was grasping his chest, and breathing short, sharp breaths. Then the thief saw them. Two pale shadows that seemed to take form from the mists, moving silently on padded feet towards them. The hounds were of a height with the thief, and both had blanched fur uncoloured and untainted, of purest white. Their pronged ears were pricked and twitching, and very red. Sinewy muscle rippled as they stalked. Between long muzzles flashed long yellow fangs, dripping slaver.

“Please, please, please! Please, take me to a place safe from here! Please, I’ll be your wife, your whore, I’ll do anything, please just let me get away!” The wife pleaded. She had the horn. She lied to me. One of the hounds neared the convulsing Eurig. It licked his clutching hand with a pink tongue. Eos screamed, tightening her grip on the thief. The other beast made its way towards them, flews drawing back to give a low growl.

The thief tried to disentangle himself from her. She clung to him vicelike, all the hard lines disappearing; replaced by atavistic fear. He could feel her heart beating hard through her breast. He looked to the horn, afraid that it might somehow disappear again. The metal was cold between his fingers, the horn smooth. The horn is mine. The hound stopped abruptly, rising on its haunches as its ears pinned flush against a snowy skull. The long muzzle wrinkled into a deep feral grimace.

Eos buried her face to his arm. If I run, she dies. I could escape... for a time. They’ll find me again. How long have they chased me? How long can I keeping going? Even if he did try to take her on the path, he doubted she could survive, let alone travel. Alone, it took great concentration to propel himself through that non-place. Then again, she’d die a crueller death if she stayed here. Out of the frying pan... He shook her with a brute strength. If she is to live, I must go alone. I’m not ready to die yet. I’m sorry. The old wizard had given him his chance. He did not intend to waste that gift. There must be a way...

Unbidden came the shadow of a thought. He went to her ear, surprising himself at how gentle he sounded. He should demand a trade for the knowledge, he knew, but the hearth had been reward enough, and the toothsome carp and the amber liquor was a surfeit in stamping the deal. Then, when it was done, she pulled away, until their faces were only a few inches apart. Her eyes were dry, and there was something else there too. He kissed her lightly on the forehead, and then slid from her embrace.

His steps were light on the stones. The hound followed him with hunger in eyes the colour of fiery garnets, a lusting fire, a want for him alone. The other beast stepped over a motionless Eurig to join his twin. Good. Follow me, then. I wonder who will tire first. In his mind’s eye, a path appeared. Not an alley or lane built in cobble or brick or mud, nor wooded game trails edged either side by walls or hedges, no, but in the narrow places between the stone and trees and iron and waters and skies and dirt, between worlds. Light from other places and other suns shimmered, moving frenetically with a slash of cerulean, now bronze, now white gold. Strange smells effused the air.

The hounds barked and growled, snapping their jaws as though they sensed what was happening. “Skulk back to your master, dogs. Tell him that the horn is mine. If he wants it, he’ll have to send a smarter dog.” He had no reason to believe they understand his words, but they rankled all the same, fur bristling in impatience. The only answer they gave was to bound forward, spraying shingle and sand and slaver. The thief looked down into the horn. Somewhere off he heard a hushed whisper, a susurration, a voice not unkind. When he raised the rim to his lips, a rich flavoured liquid filled his mouth. Where the horn had been empty a moment before, now it was filled to the brim with a dark purple ichor. It sloshed over the side to spill onto his boot. Eos shouted, but he could not see her. The hounds neared. Their fangs looked very sharp.

He took a deep draught, savouring the taste. Scents of a meadow filled with flowers, of freshly baked bread, a laughing child, a sunset upon a windswept sea. Purest white light oscillated to blue and orange and jade. The ground beneath him swayed and warped. He held the prize to them in mock salute, goading. He stepped out onto the lake.

*

Footholds assembled from empty space, immaterial purchase where he needed them exactly as he saw them in his mind. The wine sloshed about in the horn, sending droplets to float in the dancing light. A few came to land on his face and coat, and he laughed. When he looked behind him, the lake and its beach had vanished, the gaping jaws of the hounds gone.

The path ahead was winding. But then again, when had it ever been easy? For the longest time he hurried on that discarnate trail, calm and patient. Strange for a man being hunted. More concerned with the next switch-back and wynd and nasty meander threatening to throw him into some unknown place or plummet into an endless cold abyss. His fears ebbed until his entire being was meet, all his fretting suddenly seemed tedious and pointless. All that mattered was putting one foot in front of the other.

Aurorae were his only companions for a time. Tall blazing plumes of cardinal flames rose to become the pillars of a lofty hall. Interwoven between them, iridescent bulbs and coruscating tendrils of cirrus, were suspended, fluttering in some shadow wind like the banners of some great ghostly horde. Along this vast corridor he allowed himself to briefly consider his pursuers, and the one whose will extended from his seat in fair Annwn... It was an isolated and fleeting thought, the dread that flashed through his mind not as terrifying as it had once been. In place of the dread fear was a sense of understanding. How I shall frustrate their chase. He could faintly perceive a far-flung presence looking for him. No, the horn. He wants the horn.

They would find him eventually, he came to realise. When he was old, or if he fell ill, or if he looked some lout the long way, or if it just happened to slip his mind, they would be there. My white shadows. It was oddly comforting. Tears welled and blurred his vision.

“Do not weep for her”, a voiced called out to him from some ways off. “She now has the knowledge she needs to make her own way, to alight her own path”. The voice belonged to a woman, that much he could tell. The tone was imperious, husky, and familiar. “My tears are not meant for her,” he shot back. He knew to look about for the person speaking was folly. It was disembodied, and the one he sought was far away, and gone now besides. “Then for whom are they for?” she asked. Without waiting for him to respond, she said, “Do you know the way to her?”

“Yes... but I know that should it is too late. I find her, it will be the face of a stranger that looks back.” The horn was still full, he noticed in bewilderment. Silver bands and runes glittered in striking clarity, refracting to a multitude of colour in the darkness around him. “Magic,” he said into the void.

The voice seemed to find that amusing. “Of a sort, yes. Yet, it is a just one flower among a score of countless others in a garden without end or death. One permutation in a sequence existing within a realm full of possibilities, when you know how to manipulate the immaterial. Do you understand?”

“No. But I will. I want to.”

“All can be learnt in time. Even to those not born to it. With this power you can journey to all places. Even to her side. She lives, but you know that. Obstacles do not hinder, nor do they exist, to he who walks this way. What are you afraid of, if not being caught?” He didn’t answer for a while. He found that the wine had not made him drunk, but then, this was not just any other wine. Instead, he felt an awareness of things near and far, places he knew very well, and others that he had never seen, and a perception of what lay ahead along the path, where he wanted to go.

“I want to be there. To be with her. But... sometimes I question if it was love at all, if it was merely a base desire of the body. I will never know, but I must drink from that cup regardless. Acceptance of a thing lived and enjoyed, of those you loved so dearly, knowing that you cannot return there. And the regret… the failure. It is part of me now, the sorrow. Ofttimes, it is so great, all you want was to forget, to drown it.” He waited for her to say something. To hear her voice again. When the silence became too deafening, he said, “That road has long since vanished. Doubt and time has washed it away.”

“Folly!” The voice came in shrill, rebounding waves. “You can be anyone. Go anywhere. She is there, you know this. Beside the cliff. She will say that I may want to see you… even need you. With the power you bear, you can have anyone you want. Even me. I’ll be on my knees if you want, begging, wet and willing.”

“Stop it.”

“I will let you do anything to me.”

“I said fucking stop! Get out of my head!”

The light shifted and spun, and he fell. Darkness swallowed him. The voice next to his ear screamed. “DON’T YOU REMEMBER ME?” He closed his eyes, willing himself to be blind and deaf to the thoughts that plagued him. He drank a draught from the horn. Then another, and other, forcing himself to find a place to go, some foothold at least. There was no relief behind closed eyes, nor could he cover both ears without dropping the horn. Beneath a pair of cold eyes a wanton mouth opened in ecstasy, revealing rows of brown broken teeth and a groping tongue as white as a worm. The screams intensified to a horrific chorus, and he heard voices of men and women beg and accuse, “Please, take me away, I’ll do anything... You left me to die... I gave you all I had and you spat at me... I never loved you... You have my prize, thief...” Please, no, mercy, you can have it! The ground hit him hard, and only then did voices die.

He woke shivering. He had dreamt that he was back at the Giant’s Throne, bundled up warm, eating honey off freshly-baked bread and surrounded by good-hearted laughter. The comforts of dreams disappeared like the morning dew. A shrieking wind cut through the woollens, and hunger pangs shot through his belly. Between his fingers long grass sprouted green and tall. I fell. Again. A bitter laugh burst from his lips. He could not help but think that he sounded demented. Where... He looked about, and saw the horn a few feet away. I am going to chain it to my arm. He plucked it from the grass, and saw that it was undamaged by his pratfall. The runes were dull, somber and lifeless.

The churn slammed into the rocks below, throwing long columns of sea-foam high into the air. Shearwaters and puffins flew overhead, mocking him. The sun was only a handswidth above the horizon, painting the sea a worrisome crimson and the sky a bruised purple. Why did I choose to come here? He sat cross-legged, shoulders slumped. He looked into the horn. It was empty, save for the purplish sheen on the inside. What does it all mean? I have more questions than answers, where by all rights I should know better. A bumblebee drifted ponderously over his hand. A seal bobbed his head above the waters to bark. It was warmer the last time I was here, and summer had not yet ended. We drank beer from wooden cups, we were too lowly for wine. Her hair looked like spun-gold in the sunset. He kept looking down the path that wound along the cliffside, hoping that he would see a barefoot and bright-eyed girl approach, her light-weave dress billowing as she walked. Her face would be the same as he had seen it last, with that shy smile he had loved. I can go anywhere, but I chose to come back.

He sat with the horn in his lap. An eagle circled above. I can do anything. I can help. I saved Eos... didn’t I? My name can be a blessing, or I can choose to make it a curse. Annwn wants my head, but they will not catch me. I will... The fear remained, however, sprouting like a weed, and however much he tried to destroy, uproot, or poison it some moiety survived to grow anew. The old man is laughing at me. I just hope it’s from some deep hell. Let the bastard rot. Standing, he was a man half awake, or half-dead. The sun had sunk to little more than a sliver of vermillion on a bleeding see.

Darkness crept by unwelcome, all the colours of day leeching to an empty grey. Enough. His resolve fought to quell the waves of anguish that roiled inside. I am the thief that stole from Annwn and lived to boast of it. Why do I punish myself so? At his back, the first hints of moonlight outlined the hills in an argentate ribbon. The sun has set, aye. Soon comes the night. But every night must end, every night must bow to day, to the majesty of the sun... but why must I confine myself to just this one? He knew then that peace was not a prize that would be so easily snatched. I will learn everything that I must, as difficult as that may be. In time, then…

The horn he lifted to his mouth was full, a sable and fuliginous wine. Euphoria took him, the scents of cooked meat and woodsmoke and lemon, he felt the brush of rose petals and the soft pattering of raindrops on skin, a woman singing. The runes glinted playfully in the dark, the metal shining with golden light.

Odd, was all he thought as he felt himself being lifted off his feet, only to come plummeting to the ground with a force that turned his vision white. As he spat out a mouthful of blood, pain shot through his leg. He screamed, looking down and seeing the gaunt jaws of the hound rip and tear away. The pristine white fur was spattered with red.

With a savage effort he began to punch the beast in the head. Some wild thrusts found purchase, but did nothing to cause the hound dig its fangs deeper into his calf. He pulled back his good leg, and with all his weight behind it he slammed his foot into the locked muzzle again and again. The grip loosened with a yowl, the hound leaping back with hackles raised. Somehow he had kept hold of the horn through the struggle. He tried to rise, but putting any weight on his injured leg proved too excruciating. His breeches were covered in blood more black than red.

The hound stalked back and forth, and the thief could not help but think it was goading him. I deserve it. He laughed, and spat some more blood. Shuffling backwards, he came to where the ground gave way to the tumult of the sea fifty feet below. Half submerged shelves of jagged rock rippled through the waters. If he could just pull himself to the edge...

A growl came from his left, low and threatening. Slowly, he turned to face the other beast. His face was stone, scowling and wracked with pain. Not a foot from his head a long pale shadow stalked closer, its eyes a pair of febrile stars aflame and unblinking, looking only at the horn. The thief could feel the pumping of blood from his leg. It must be now. He placed the horn in his right hand. It was a feeble gesture, he knew. All he needed was to get away. I can’t get away. The growl grew louder, until the hound’s jaw shuddered with rage. The thief grimaced, “Never.” The bark that the hound let fly made his teeth chatter. It was all he could do to resist the urge to crawl away. I’ve risked too much. He was beaten and broken, chased across the immensity of space, haunted by strange faces, but he would not give up. He could not. I will never stop. I can stick it with the horn if it comes at me.

The hound did not lunge. It barked and brayed, until finally the thief answered with his own roar. A wordless, primordial scream, fed by the pain in his leg, the hatred of his betrayers, the love he had forgotten. It lasted for the longest time, turning every so often to give the monster that had savaged his leg a taste of his torment. He screamed until his voice was hoarse and his throat raw, until full dark had descended upon the world. When it was done, he lay there on one elbow, the horn clutched to his chest like a babe, his chest heaving. The hound near to him sat smartly, followed closely by his twin, licking the blood from his muzzle with a greedy tongue.

The thief wet his mouth with a bitter soup of blood and spittle, croaking out, “Just... a little... closer.” He forced himself to the edge, every movement heavy and slow. He felt drunk. Too much blood. His hand dropped into empty air. Closer. Looking down, the ink black sea crashed against the stacks, their points looking black and merciless. Aim for the water, he thought ruefully. In time, all is possible. The pain had ebbed, and he felt only cold. Weariness overcame him, and he suddenly needed to sleep. No. I can’t. He was too weak to go on the path. The horn was empty. He willed it to become the vessel of the wine again.

However much he tried, it remained dry as the grave. He had felt despair in his life. He had grieved in his own quiet way, supping upon that rank gruel. The despair he felt then, quivering on the edge of the cliffside with an empty drinking horn and a mauled leg, was greater than he had known, and it shamed him. Tears filled his vision, stinging tears that froze on his cheeks. The light of the moon sent half-light to play on the distant hills. He leant to the edge.

“Tears again?” Said a voice smooth and flowing. He may as well have been singing, almost a man of the fabled bards and soothsmen of the north, that rhymed and flyted in the courts of giants and wizards. Gently stroking the closest beast was a blur of a man. The thief swiped at his eyes to banish the tears. Tall, lean, dark-featured figure dressed in a multitude shades of green. From his calfs-hide boots to his tunic and cloak, all the fine fabrics and skins were embroidered masterfully with swirls of gold-thread, like living veins of gold in the moonglow, a promise of wealth and power. But it was his face he saw as defined as though it were day. “When you wept on the path, I thought it poignant, especially with your little tiff. No, keep your mouth shut.” The thief moaned, clawing at the roots that hung gravely on the edge. Its's him... The smile that graced on those winsome lips was wide and inviting, and the eyes glinted with an obscene curiosity. “Yes... Me.”

For the longest impossible time, the moon raked across the dome of night, entertained by her court of countless stars and celestial clouds. Lord Arawn helped get the thief to sit up, with much difficulty and a flood of curses. He urged him to let him do his work, and with deft hands, the fay ripped a strip from the thief’s breeches, then another, and another, and produced a large metal bowl and wine bottle. The thief did not see where they came from. He must have passed out, for when he came to, the fay had a fire blazing hungrily, with the bowl suspended craftily from a wooden tripod above the flames. The bowl was full with a liquid, long tapering serpents simmering within.

“Why am I still alive?” He asked his captor. He is my captor, isn’t he?

“I hold you alive because I will it. The manner in which you will perish is somewhat unknown in the nonce. Regardless, you will die, Gwrgant, that is inexorable.” Hearing his name was a dagger in the gut. He knows my name. He knows more than he ought able to... Lord Arawn made a grin dripping with guile, and set about cleaning the deep bites with cloth soaked in wine.

“Then I ask this, why are helping me? You should have thrown me off the cliff and taken the horn from my stiff fingers.” One of the hounds was sprawled lazily beside the lord, Gwrgant saw. Looking about for his twin, Gwrgant felt a rough tongue lick his cheek. The other sat at the thief’s shoulder. They are silent. . . like a darting white shadow. There was a playfulness in those eyes now, where before had been a hunger for his flesh.

“The notion had passed my mind, young thief. I promptly dismissed it as madness. I would learn nothing from killing you outright. Nothing at all. For if I am anything, I am curious. . . curious of kings and their machinations, of wizards and their meddling, and... rogues, most of all. This will keep the wounds from festering.” He flung a glass vial at Gwrgant. Inside, a milky viscous fluid moved sluggishly. When the water came to boil, the lord made a haughty noise that Gwrgant took as satisfaction, and then proceeded to bind the thigh tightly with the strips of sodden fabric. He stifled a scream. Through the mephitis of blood and wine he eyed the lord, marvelling at how dextrous he laboured in the dark. Regardless, he stayed still and tried his best not to distract him.

“My thanks... although I don’t know if I should be thanking you, after you sent your hellhounds after me, and... this.” He gestured to his leg. The laugh that burst from the lord’s lips was full of mirth, as warm and comforting as a hearth in the dead of winter. He had a silver flask in hand. “Here. Drink this.” Again he tossed it underhand at Gwrgant. “I doubt it compares to the vintage you chanced upon in Eurig’s house, but we make do with our lot.” Gwrgant gingerly pulled the stopper and drank, wasting no time to admire the scent. It was good, more than good, as rich and full as any wine. It sent a warm tendril down his gullet and did not burn. A summer came to mind, that summer he loved years ago, when the flowers had bloomed in the meadow beside the mill. When had given her a band of flowers as a gift.

“Do you approve? As I said, I am a curious person.” His pale face was a gilt mask, his clothes a mantle of auric splendour. “You brewed this?”

“I did. A concoction of my own making. I had a dozen casks made from this summer’s harvest. If you would.” Gwrgant returned the flask to Arawn, who swigged at it like anything but a lord. “Har! You must not be churlish with me. I can see that it gave you joy. A little too cloying at the end, I think. I hate it when that happens. It will help with the pain also, but then again, any piss-poor vintage brewed in any backwater squalor will help with pain.”

Gwrgant allowed himself to give away nothing. He edged closer to the fire, suddenly aware of the horn in his lap. The flames burned bright and hot against the chill of the night, and soon he found that he was dozing, each time he dropped his head snapping his eyes open again and silently cursing himself. The lord seemed unperturbed. The hounds yawned and fell asleep coiled about one another. Sounds seemed to distort to Gwrgant’s ear. Once he even heard a woman’s voice.

“Did you hear that?” He asked the fay.

His face looked sharper now, hard and lined, “I hear nothing.”

Gwrgant was bone-tired, falling asleep twice, and only waking fully when a savoury aroma greeted him. The lord had made a thick stew of peppered leak, mashed together with some strange chunky vegetable. They ate, and Gwrgant complimented the other’s cooking, until he silently scolded himself.

It was quiet for a time. Even the crashing waves seeming to bow to this lofty lord. They passed the flash back and forth, but no words were spoken. That is, until Gwrgant tossed the horn at Arawn’s feet.

“Take it.” He said, trying to hide his wounded pride.

“This must be some lark, for I was certain you said that you would never release custody of the horn.” His smile was mischievous, but Gwrgant didn’t think it disingenuous.

“You are not the villain I thought you to be. Besides, the horn is yours by all rights.”

“Some might say that mere possession is a right in itself.”

“Aye. Some. Not all. You obviously prize this horn, sending the hounds of the Annwn after it. I now little of it, bar that it sometimes fills with wine and gives me a clear mind on the path. But, you surely have the knowledge to utilise it properly. That is cause enough to return it to you, my lord.” Arawn made only to blink. He scooped up the horn, and left it aloft. He drank from it then, a chaste sip. Flicking his wrist, he upturned the horn to let a steady stream of liquor the colour of gold spilled forth. It splashed loudly to the ground, waking the hounds, who cocked their heads at the drink in confusion. One trotted over to sniff at the drink.

Only when Arawn turned it upright again did it stop. He took another sip. “You are wrong. It is not the wine that gave you the insight you needed to tread your path. You did that, not the drink. Only when you can master your own mind can you use my horn. Evidently you have far to go in perfecting your magic. It is blunt, I admit, yet like any craft it must be worked upon, honed and sharpened, practiced and perfected until it shines brighter than the sun of day and reflects more richly than the clearest mirror.”

The man who had stolen the horn had no words. “I—I never-- ”

“You had a good teacher. He spoke true: distractions have no place in magic-craft.” A wry smile played on his handsome lips in the flames of night.

*

Cold white light burned his eyes. Nothing remained of the fire but ash. The lord was nowhere to be seen, nor did his faithful four-legged servants deign to appear. The sweet allure of rest had overcome his will it seemed, pulled softly from the cold night, and into the soothing morass of sleep. Did I dream?

The pain in his leg had eased, and he found that he could walk with an obvious limp. It was a bright day, the clouds drifting in thin shy cirrus. Guarding his eyes from the sun, he looked out over the estuary, where the river-mouth gaped open like a laughing fat man. The tide had gone out, he saw, the fine sandy beaches stretching far away across the bay and up the channel.

Along the Cliffside he made his way, to one side of him the land giving way to a sweeping cove, the other low fields long fallen to disuse. He spared me. The realisation was marred by regrets, the things he could never change. He touched the horn. It was reassuring to feel, tied tight and secure at his belt.

He had found the horn empty again that morning, a single droplet of dark red clinging to the inside. There had been nothing else to do but plod on. He thought of using the path, only to be reminded that his ankle was injured by a sharp pain up his leg. It must be done the hard way, then. Any road that leads up a mountain will be uphill, and I will be traversing the steepest. But at the end, they all climb to the summit. Somewhere then, a place near to stay, or close enough to rest up at the least, that was all he needed. A hard bed and hard food will suffice.

In time, all can be gained.

An old fishwife was the first one he saw, tanning some leather on a rack on the edge of a hamlet. She spied him with a hard eye, for that was the only one she had.

“Good wife! Please, I have hurts, and am I hungry. I will be most grateful if you should be of help.” He made himself look most pitiful. She spat and scratched at a red sore on her neck, hiding any pity she may have had. “You speaks like a lord, that you do. I will help, aye. We 'ave room for a traveler, yes. But yous will pay or trade, that you shall, we cannot be doing for charity.”

Gwrgant made an exaggerated bow. He gently caressed the horn. He made sure his smile was sweet.

“I am certain I can be very useful to you.”