High The Vanes (The Change Book 2) by David Kearns Page A

leg, just above her knee. She screamed. A spot of blood appeared.

    “Good,” he said. “Now we may proceed.”

    He looked at me for a few minutes then turned away to face Eluned. “That woman.” He pointed the stick at my face. “That woman you brought here. She thought she could talk to me. That I would have polite conversations with her. You should have told her that I do not talk with such as her.”

    He prodded Eluned’s leg again. She moaned. A tear ran down her cheek.

    “You should have told her. I am Nefyn, last of the Votadini. What is she? I do not even know her name. I think perhaps she has no name. You should have told her.”

    Again he poked Eluned’s leg. A third drop of blood appeared.

    “You are two women. I have not seen a woman in Uricon since when? Let me see. Ah yes. Since my mother left. With my father. To travel to Catraeth. To drink mead. Or so my father told her.”

    Through the pain, throbbing in my head, forced as I was to listen to this, something stirred in my thoughts. He knew more about when his parents supposedly left than he should. They had left, so he told us, when he was ‘a babe in arms’. How could he know what his father had said to his mother?

    “I cannot count the number of years since that time of sorrow. They have been spent in this dungeon while I waited for their return. For the return of the chieftain. Leader of the Votadini. The return of the Expected One. The hope of my people. And of yours, Eluned Llyn Y Gadair.”

    He leaned forward and ran the point of the stick along the line of blood on her chest. Fresh blood appeared.

    “The hope of your people, Eluned Llyn Y Gadair. The Expected One. He who would return us to our rightful place in this benighted land. Surely you must know the stories of your people? Even though you have been living with these short-lifes? Perhaps you have lived with them too long. Perhaps you have become like them. Ignorant of your past. Your people forgotten. Is that so?”

    He prodded her thigh with his stick. She shook her head, slowly.

    “Wait,” he said. “I will read you something else. Perhaps this will rouse your memory.” He went back to the table and picked up the book of poems. When he was seated again, he opened it and read.

    “Here. ‘ and the hard grasp of the grave, until a hundred generations of people have passed.’ No, that is not it. Wait. Here. ‘ Bright were the halls, many the baths, High the gables, great the joyful noise, many the mead-hall full of pleasures. Until fate the mighty overturned it all. ’ Yes. And so it was. Do you not remember these things, Eluned Llyn Y Gadair? The halls of your fathers? No, perhaps you do not remember. Yes. ‘ Fate the mighty overturned it all’.” He dropped the book.

    “Did you think I would accept this other? This no more than a child? This girl who calls herself a woman? Did you think I could accept that this was the Expected One? You are truly mad, Eluned Llyn Y Gadair. Truly mad. Your fathers and their fathers must be weeping now. Not the tears of a woman who knows her fate.”

    He ran the point of his stick down Eluned’s cheek, where a tear had run.

    “No. Not those tears. They weep the tears of men who know that a woman is all that is left of their people. They and their fathers and their fathers before them until they are lost in the mists of time. Before Romans spoiled our land. With their brick houses and their stone pillars. All that rots around us here. Where are the Romans now? Gone into the earth. Wait. My poem has lines about this.”

    He bent and picked up the book. He opened it again.

    “Where? Here. No. Here. No, not that. Wait. I have it. ‘ Earth-grip holds the proud builders, departed, long lost’.   Yes. Long lost indeed.”

    He threw the book into the fireplace where it lay smouldering on the still warm ashes.

    “Perhaps the elders were wrong. Perhaps they told us false stories to keep us happy. To keep us amused. Perhaps