The Pendragon's Challenge (The Last Pendragon Saga Book 7) by Sarah Woodbury Page A

feet on his own, Taliesin turned to look at them. “Where do you think here is, Goronwy? The Otherworld is what you make it, didn’t you know?”
    Goronwy shook his head, hesitant for perhaps the first time in his life. “This is … what the Otherworld looks like to you?”
    “Not to me. This must be one of you, since that castle on the hill wasn’t there the last time I was here. A reference point, I think.”
    Catrin looked past him to Mabon. “What about him?”
    Taliesin turned, eyebrows raised. “He is very disappointed. He was expecting something different.” He looked directly at Goronwy. “For Arthur, the Otherworld was a healing isle of peace and tranquility; for others, it is an endless Feast with bottomless pitchers of mead; for some, it is a fiery pit where they suffer for crimes that went unpunished in their mortal lives. The Otherworld becomes what those who pass into it need it—or imagine it—to be.”
    “A place of power,” Goronwy said.
    Taliesin snorted. “This is a place of power, as Mabon will soon discover.” He cocked his head. “We won’t tell him. Come.” Then he set off at a brisk pace down the hill, heading west away from Dinas Bran.
    Goronwy and Catrin hustled after him, and Catrin didn’t even need to ask again where they were going, because they’d gone only a hundred yards before a castle—one of silver and gold like she’d imagined—appeared in the next valley where a moment before there’d been nothing but pastureland. The castle contained many doors and windows, but there was only one way into the keep from their current position, and that was through the front gate.
    Behind them, Mabon laughed harshly. “You’d better know what you’re doing, Taliesin, to venture in there.”
    Catrin had already started unthinkingly towards the castle, but at Mabon’s laugh, she stopped. The castle was calling to her, like a bard playing a lyre, drawing her towards it. She shuddered and found herself agreeing yet again with Mabon.
    A smile was playing around Taliesin’s lips. “How quickly you forget that I didn’t invite any of you to come.”
     
     

Chapter Ten
    Hywel
     
    E ver since Caer Fawr, Hywel and Bedwyr had taken it upon themselves to act as scouts for Cade, even if to some men’s eyes such duties were beneath knights. They didn’t care what others thought—and, even more, they didn’t trust anyone else to do as good a job.
    “Cade and Dafydd should have sent Angharad and Rhiann away like I did Aderyn,” Bedwyr said in an undertone, though his eyes never left the front line of the Northumbrian force that had appeared out of the pre-dawn gloom, advancing south upon Chester. He and Hywel were crouched behind a stone wall that marked the border of a field. Their intent had been to stay well away from the Northumbrian army, but Hywel was thinking now that they had to get closer.
    He didn’t mention that to Bedwyr yet, however, instead scoffing openly at Bedwyr’s comment. Numerous marriages had occurred in the aftermath of Caer Fawr—out of a general sense of jubilation or because it had been impressed upon everyone that the time for such things was now or it could be never. Aderyn had been one of the healers who’d tended the men after the battle. “Your wife rode to help Bronwen at the birth of her child. It had nothing to do with your command.”
    Bedwyr grumbled under his breath, something about women knowing their own mind when they should be thinking of their husband’s wishes, but he didn’t mean it—any more than Cade might mean it if he’d been speaking of Rhiann. For Hywel’s part, while he was pleased with the happiness in Bedwyr’s face since he’d married, Caer Fawr had taught him quite the opposite lesson from everyone else: the last thing he wanted was to involve a woman in this life he was leading or bring a child into such a chaotic world.
    “We need to warn the city,” Hywel said.
    Bedwyr shook his head. “Believe me. They already